


A Summer to Kill For

by WinterRose527



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, no canon to be found
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-04-16 14:46:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 51,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14167203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterRose527/pseuds/WinterRose527
Summary: Myrcella Baratheon and Sansa Stark are the best of friends. Faced with their last summer before college, they decide to take a cross-country road-trip. They've got a convertible, a to-do list, and each other...what could possibly go wrong?





	1. It all started

It all started with a list. 

 

Well that’s not _entirely_ true, but no story ever is.

 

You see, on a snowy, New England afternoon, the list was created. To be more specific it was Thursday, February 22nd at 1:03 pm when the list was created. It’s odd to be able to trace something as incidental as a list to it’s very inception, but 1 o’clock is when Sansa Stone and Myrcella Baratheon shared study hall.

 

They usually studied during study hall, truly, they did. But this was second semester _senior year_. They’d both gotten into the schools of their choice (Yale for Myrcella, Bryn Marr for Sansa) and their teachers had really given up on trying to rally the restless upperclassmen to focus on trigonometry and Raskolnikov’s demise. 

 

The girls had been going to school together since they were three at _Septa Mordane’s,_ where they’d met on the swing set, and couldn’t really imagine what next year would be like when they didn’t have classes together, when they no longer had ballet rehearsal or horseback riding competitions. When sleepovers were for special occasions rather than a way of life. 

 

So, on that snowy Thursday afternoon, the list had been created. _Sansa and Ella’s Road Trip Necessities: A Fool-Proof Guide to the Best Summer Ever._

 

It would be foolish to think that the two girls in that study hall knew what they were doing, what that summer would come to mean for them. At that moment, they were just two best friends, trying to hold on to one another as long as possible. What’s that saying about hell again? 

 

Oh right, it’s paved with good intentions. 

 

***

 

Evidence, Exhibit A: 

 

_Sansa and Ella’s Road Trip Necessities: A Fool-Proof Guide to the Best Summer Ever_

 

_1.) All parties must kiss a new boy in every time zone._

 

_2.) All parties must skinny-dip in the Pacific._

 

_3.) All parties must call home at least once a week (yes that means you Ella!)_

 

_4.) All parties must learn something new about a person in every town they visit._


	2. And all at once, I started to like New York

“Yes, I have everything,” Myrcella Baratheon said for the thousandth time. She tried to keep the irritation out of her voice, but they’d been over this all of last night and for the better part of the morning and Sansa was waiting. Their _adventure_ was waiting, and Myrcella detested being late. 

 

“Don’t take that tone with me, young lady, or I’ll think better of allowing this outrageous event all-together,” her mother Cersei said with the superior tone that had been Myrcella’s constant childhood companion.

 

She was about to say _It isn’t as though I need your permission_ , which was true, but she did need the AmEx that rested in her wallet, that would secure luxury suites when she and Sansa got sick of motels, and four star dinners when they could no longer stomach junk food. 

 

“You’re right mother, I’m sorry. I’m just excited is all,” she said, with a gleaming smile on her face. Her mother was tiresome, controlling, and vapid but she could never deny Myrcella when she smiled. “But I’ll miss you,” she lied for good measure. 

 

“Oh I’m sure,” her mother said with a knowing smirk, “You just make sure that Stone girl doesn’t get you into any trouble…” 

 

Myrcella fought the urge to roll her eyes. She was no dare-devil but Sansa made her look like one. If anything it should be Mrs. Stone cautioning Sansa against _her_ , but the sweet woman loved her like her own and would do no such thing. 

 

“I promise not to let her corrupt me,” Myrcella said and with a kiss to her mother’s smooth cheek, she plopped herself in the convertible that had been her graduation present, and drove off. 

 

She drove the familiar path to the Stone residence, which was an aptly chosen stone structure that looked as though it was from a storybook. Myrcella could no sooner beep than the princess of the castle herself came running out, her dog Lady at her heels and her mother rushing behind. 

 

“Myrcella dear, do you have enough money for gas?,” Mrs. Stone asked then blanched at her own thoughtlessness, “What am I saying, of course you do. But…do you have everything you need?”

 

“Not to worry Mrs. Stone,” Myrcella said with a grin, more genuine than the one she’d given her own mother, “We’ve got everything we need, don’t we Dovey?”

 

“Hear, hear!,” Sansa said with a grin, then leaned down to attack her dog with kisses, promising to come home soon with lots of treats. She fell into her mother’s arms and that familiar twinge of jealousy rested in Myrcella’s gut, but before it could take hold her best friend was opening up the door and plopping down next to her. Myrcella could see her blue eyes sparkling behind her sunglasses and just like that, the jealousy was gone. 

 

“Be safe, girls, and have _fun_ ,” Mrs. Stone said, “You deserve it.”

 

“Thanks Mrs. Stone,” Myrcella said as Sansa said, “Love you, mum!”

 

They waved goodbye to her as Myrcella pulled out of the long drive. Sansa took up the role of DJ, and soon the familiar sounds of Lorde came through the speakers. _Now it’s summer_ , Myrcella thought. 

 

“First stop, Manhattan?,” Sansa asked as they pulled out of their sleepy New England town. 

 

“After all _, I’ve never been to New York_ ,” Myrcella quoted Breakfast at Tiffany’s, a constant choice at sleepovers. 

 

“Let’s buy some furniture and give the cat a name,” Sansa replied with a grin. 

 

“That, my dear, is not on the list,” she reminded her. 

 

Sansa opened the glove compartment and pulled out the list, thrumming her finger against her lip. 

 

“Where shall we start?,” Sansa asked. 

 

“Hmm…,” Myrcella said, as though she hadn’t known already, “I’m thinking…number 8 for you.” She snuck a look at Sansa who kept her eyes on the road but was grinning in spite of herself. “Attagirl…”

 

“To the perfect summer,” Sansa said, holding up her water bottle. 

 

“To us,” Myrcella replied, tapping her own against it. 

 

150 miles to go and they were just getting started. 

 

***

 

“You don’t really mean it, do you?,” Sansa asked as they made their way through the crowded bar in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 

 

They had gone through a tremendous amount of effort to get the fake IDs that rested in their clutches, but the bouncer hadn’t even asked for them, taking one look at Myrcella’s beautiful blonde hair and her legs and waving them in. 

 

To Sansa, they stuck out like sore thumbs. All around them, girls in high waisted shorts and crop tops gyrated as boys played pool, and here they were, eighteen and wearing what they might have worn to the yacht club for dinner with their parents. Nevertheless, Ella held her hand and lead her through the bar, wearing her light blue sundress as though it were the sexiest thing in the world, and with the way boys stopped to ogle her, it might as well have been. 

 

“Oh I definitely _do_ mean it,” Ella said as they got to the bar. “It’s on the list…”

 

“ _Fine_ ,” Sansa said, and smiled sweetly at the bartender, a large man with hair and a beer as red as her own. 

 

“Hello lovelies, what can I get for you,” he asked them. 

 

Ella looked at her expectantly and Sansa sighed, “I’ll take a tequila shot and one for you, handsome.”

 

He grinned, “I never drink the stuff, I’m a whiskey man myself…”

 

“That’ll do, and make it three,” Ella said with a wink at her and she couldn’t help but grin. 

 

The bartender chuckled and pulled out three shot glasses and a bottle of whiskey, pouring three shots and sliding two towards them. 

 

“To better choices,” he said. 

 

“At some point, anyway,” Ella said and he chuckled and poured the whiskey down his throat.

 

Ella’s bravado failed when she tasted the alcohol, and reached for Sansa’s hand at the same point Sansa reached for hers. They squeezed one another as the alcohol ran down their throats and when they slammed their shot glasses down on the counter it was Sansa who turned with a glimmer in her eyes.

 

“What are you thinking, Dovey?,” Ella asked, the alcohol already taking it’s effect in the rosiness of her cheeks. 

 

“Oh well…I’m just thinking…it’s not long that we’ll be in this time zone and well…there are so very many boys here,” Sansa said and bit her lip to keep from grinning.

 

Ella sighed and turned, her back against the bar, appraising the room and looking for her target. Sansa grinned when she saw her head tilt as she appraised a boy, a preppy one who very well could have been from their hometown, with sun kissed skin and dark brown curls. 

 

“I think we’re going to need another, handsome,” Sansa said. 

 

“The name’s Tormund, beautiful, and your wish is my command.”

 

***

 

The alcohol was still burning in her throat when she winked at Sansa and strode through the crowded bar. The whiskey was filling her with a sense of invincibility and she didn’t bother looking when she felt eyes on her as she wove her way through the bar. 

 

Her eyes rested on a beautiful boy standing near the jukebox, watching his friends play pool. He had a square jaw, and though short, was well built, his muscular forearms evident from the way he’d rolled up his pale pink Oxford shirt. 

 

He saw her coming over to him and she smirked at the way he straightened up. _New England or Manhattan, boys are all the same._

 

“Do you have a quarter?,” she asked him with a raise of her eyebrow. 

 

He grinned, “You trust fund girls are all the same, don’t carry anything smaller than a fifty, hmm?”

 

“Says the boy with the $10,000 watch on his wrist,” she countered. 

 

He threw his head back and laughed, she liked the sound of it. 

 

“Fair point, well made,” he said and then he leaned in and whispered, “Though I didn’t buy this…it’s a family heirloom.”

 

“Even worse,” she whispered back and earned the laugh again.

 

“If I give you a quarter will you give me your name?,” he asked her. 

 

“Oh darling, my name is worth _way_ more than that,” she said with a smile, liking this game and the list and Manhattan all at once. 

 

“Then how about a dance?,” he asked her, holding out a quarter. 

 

She took it from him and placed it in the machine, choosing her song and hearing Sansa squeal from across the bar when it came on.

 

“Just try to keep up,” she said over her shoulder as she went to join her friend. 

 

 

****

 

Evidence, Exhibit B:

 

A Patek Philippe wristwatch


	3. There were these damsels, right?

“I’m pretty sure that place has bedbugs,” Sansa said as they walked out of the third motel they’d tried that hour. 

 

They’d come to a particularly depressing stretch in Ohio and knew that they didn’t have it in them to push through to another major city that evening. 

 

“What do you think this town’s airbnb is like?,” Ella asked with a small smile, trying to keep things light. 

 

“I bet it comes with a complimentary meth lab,” Sansa said solemnly. 

 

Within moments they were both doubled over in laughter at her dramatics and the sheer ridiculousness of their situation. Here they were, two heiresses who could afford any hotel in the country, and they were debating between a motel 3 and a motel 5. 

 

“Why don’t we just camp tonight?,” Ella asked. They’d packed a tent so they could sleep at the beach when they reached the pacific, maybe at the Grand Canyon as well. She certainly hadn’t _intended_ to pull it out in a random town in Ohio but Sansa was right, she already felt itchy just from stepping into the last place and this, after all, was meant to be an adventure. 

 

Sansa pulled out her phone and consulted with the map.

 

“There seems to be another town just ten miles down, says it’s _Popular with explorers and passers-through_ , there is a campground and a pub called Eastwatch that is meant to have the best burger this side of Cincinnati,” Sansa said.

 

“Well with esteem such as that, however could we refuse?,” Ella said, though her stomach rumbled and the thought of a burger and some French fries really was too enticing to pass up.

 

She tossed Sansa the keys and went around to the passenger side. 

 

“You really want to camp?,” Sansa asked her as they got back on the highway.

 

“Well unless this burger comes with a Queen size bed, I don’t see what choice we have,” Ella said pragmatically. 

 

Dust kicked up on the road around them, and the sun was setting, disappearing slowly in the horizon. This was the first set back in their trip, which had been going wonderfully as they eased up and down the Northeast, stopping in this town or that because of something one of them had read or heard about. She grabbed Sansa’s hand and squeezed it.

 

If there was one thing about Myrcella Baratheon, it was her fortitude. They had her car and each other. They were going to be just fine.

 

***

 

“This. Is. Without a doubt. The best burger this side of Cincinnati,” Ella said as she took another bite.

 

“Mmhm,” Sansa nodded, uncharacteristically unladylike as she shoved more in her mouth. 

 

The burgers had come with fried onions and a special sauce that had to be at least 90% mayonnaise, and the waitress had plopped two lemonades down with them, simply muttering “Trust me” as she walked away. 

 

They were sharing a basket of fries as they took a break in trying to find a suitable hotel. As though a charming bed & breakfast might appear if only they took a long enough break in searching.

 

They were sitting in a dark pub, they both the youngest and the only women inside. It was mostly filled with old men, watching a baseball game, though there were a couple of tables of younger guys.

 

Had this been New York, they might have tried to flirt, but here, amidst the haystacks, they kept to themselves.

 

They’d been raised in a small town, where all of the local residences had grown up with their beauty, had time to get used to it. So as it happened, the two girls had no idea exactly _how_ beautiful they were. They had no idea that their light laughter sounded like wind chimes to the men amassed, or that the ears around them had perked as they discussed their plans for the evening. 

 

“I think we should make camp off Route 5, there is a stream there which hopefully will be a bit cooler,” Ella said, fanning herself with her plastic menu.

 

“Oh you don’t want to make camp out there,” an accented older man cut in. He approached their table with a friend in tow, younger, with pale skin and erratic bright blue eyes. “Coyotes’ll get you sure enough.”

 

Sansa squirmed in her seat. She’d almost prefer coyotes to the way the younger man was appraising her. She felt Ella’s foot press against hers and her heart rate slowed. 

 

“That is _mighty_ kind of you, sir,” Ella said sweetly, in pure self-deprecation mode. “Mostly to the coyotes though…not sure how good a meal I’d make.”

 

“Oh I wager you’d do,” the older man said, licking his lips and Ella recoiled. 

 

It was Sansa who cut in now, “Not sure about that…don’t the best predators always look like prey?,” she asked, her grin positively wolfish. 

 

“Well hot _damn_ ,” the younger man said, slapping his thigh and making Sansa wonder if he was entirely sane. “Seems we’ve got ourselves some fighters.”

 

“Not for long,” Ella said, pulling cash out of her wallet and dropping it on the table. She stood, and it was a testament to her presence that the men actually took a step back. “If you’ll excuse us.”

 

Sansa took her by the hand and followed her out. They were walking quickly to the car, and though they hadn’t spoken she knew they’d not be making camp here tonight. She neared the passenger door when she felt a cold hand on her wrist.

 

She whirled around from the force of his grasp and found herself face to face with the younger man. 

 

“Aw hunny, you ran off… make me think you don’t like me,” he said, grabbing her by the waist. 

 

“Get off of her, you mongrel,” Ella said, trying to wrench Sansa from his grasp. 

 

Sansa added her strength to Ella’s but still they were no match for him. Suddenly though, the man’s grip released on her, his hand still extended though as though she might have saved him from the grasp of another man, no older than twenty, who dragged him away. 

 

He punched him in the face as Ella and she got in the car. 

 

“There’s a hotel 20 miles away, Castle Black…go there you’ll be safe,” the man shouted at them. 

 

“Drive, Sansa,” Ella said, breaking Sansa from her daze. She’d been watching the man punch her attacker again and again, as though he was kneading bread. 

 

She pulled out of the parking lot on two wheels, the breaks screeching as she pulled onto the highway, away, towards Castle Black and hopefully, safety.

 

***

 

“So I’m sorry my dears, you won’t find any _spa_ or any such as what I’m sure you’re used to, but we do have a pool and a Superior Suite available…,” the kindly older man at the reception desk told them as Sansa stood by her side. 

 

Ella was shaken, but had felt better the moment they’d walked through the doors of Castle Black Inn. 

 

It wasn’t exactly a castle, but it was a very fine stone house just a mile off the highway, that had what her mother would have called the _right_ kind of cars in the parking lot and a kind staff ready to help two girls deeply in need of a bubble bath. 

 

“The Superior Suite would be perfect, sir, thank you,” Ella said handing him her well-worn AmEx. “How about it Dovey, a swim might do you some good?,” she asked rubbing Sansa’s arm. 

 

Sansa nodded as a bellhop came to take their bags and Mr. Mormont handed her the keys. They followed the bellhop into the elevator, getting off on the third floor. He opened the door to a generous sitting room with a bedroom on either side. 

 

“Oh this will do nicely, thank you,” she said handing him a tip and closing the door behind him. 

 

Sansa stood in the middle of the room, seemingly in a daze. While Ella was shaken, she knew she was in much better shape than Sansa. Ella looked around the room until she found what she was looking for and crossed to the mini-fridge. She pulled out a mini bottle of vodka and one of whiskey.

 

“Pick your poison,” she said. 

 

Sansa turned to her and gave her a disbelieving look. 

 

“Come on, Dovey…it’s number 10…,” she said teasingly. 

 

Sansa rolled her eyes but walked over and took the vodka from her left hand, unscrewing the cap and downing it. 

 

“Grab two more, then let’s swim,” Sansa said determinedly. 

 

“There’s my girl.”

 

***

 

The robes weren’t exactly as nice as the ones at the Plaza, but it didn’t stop her and Ella from giggling as they made their way through the hotel, keys in their pockets and bathing suits under their robes. 

 

They were crossing the lobby when she whirled around.

 

“It’s you!,” she exclaimed, seeing the familiar inky black curls. 

 

“You’re alright?,” he asked her, suddenly in her face. 

 

She forced herself to take a step back from him. He was after all a stranger. A rather _violent_ stranger who …had suggested they come to this hotel.

 

She felt Ella’s arm wrap around her waist, “We’re fine…mostly thanks to you.”

 

“There you go, Jon Snow, taking all the credit,” a grin-filled voice said as another man, the same age as his companion with russet curls and bright blue eyes, turned around from where he stood at the reception desk. One of his eyes wouldn’t open entirely due to a bruise forming. 

 

“By the looks of that I’d say you’re due for some as well…unless of course that was _not_ earned defending our honor,” Sansa said. 

 

“You know it kind of _seems_ like you’re thanking us, but it also kind of seems like you’re accusing us…,” Jon said with a grin. “Am I mad?,” he asked turning to his friend.

 

“Yes, but that’s besides the point,” he returned and winked at Ella when she giggled. 

 

Sansa saw Ella blushing out of her corner of her eye, a rarity, and decided to take control of the situation. She for one wouldn’t be distracted by the way a curl had fallen out of Jon’s man-bun or the strength of his forearms or the way he was looking at her like he’d never stop.

 

“You’re not mad as that is _exactly_ what we’re doing. Why are you here?,” she asked. 

 

“We’re staying here…,” Jon said. “And before you start thinking _well isn’t that awfully convenient_ , the answer is no. We were in the same predicament you seemed to be in tonight yesterday. Except our car had broken down as well.”

 

“Let me guess…you ended up back in town for the _best burger this side of Cincinnati?,_ ” Ella asked with a cheeky grin.

 

The other man rubbed his stomach, “Third one in two days. Think I’ll have to be rolled to Louisville.”

 

“You’re going to Louisville?,” Sansa asked. 

 

“Next stop on the _tour-de-force_ that is our summer road-trip,” he answered with a grin.

 

“You girls heading that way as well?,” Jon asked curiously.

 

“Oh we’d never tell a stranger a thing like that,” Ella said flirtatiously, though her gaze fell on his blue-eyed friend.

 

“Good, because I’d very much like to be your friend,” he said, equally flirtatiously. He crossed to her and held out his hand. “Robb Stark, at your service.”

 

Ella took it, shaking it firmly, “Myrcella Baratheon. And I’ve got just one question.”

 

“What’s that, gorgeous?,” he asked her.

 

“You own a swimsuit, Robb Stark?”

 

***

 

Office Police Report:

 

Suspect 1: 

 

Robb Stark

 

Twenty years old

 

Male

 

Blue Eyes

 

Red Hair


	4. And all the buzzing things

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a short update! Hope you enjoy, xo

“No way, the _best_ ice cream in Philadelphia is Mr. Brinkley’s, isn’t that right Ellabelle?,” Sansa asked, her cheeks pink and her eyes bright.

 

“That’s right Dovey, and anyone who says differently is _delusional_ ,” she answered, trying very hard not to give Robb a cheeky smile as she did.

 

She failed though.

 

The truth was, it was almost impossible not to flirt with him. With his bright blue eyes and square jaw, it was hard enough in the lobby of the inn, but then he and Jon had joined them at the pool. She was a sucker for a boy in swim trunks, and the Vineyard Vines ones he was wearing screamed the fact that his mother had probably picked them out for him. To top it off he was an Adonis, with sinewy muscles and a six pack she wouldn’t mind exploring.

 

“Delusional, is it?,” he asked her with a grin of his own, “I think you’re just upset you missed out on Frenchie’s. Don’t worry, I’ll take you there some day.”

 

Okay, so he couldn’t really seem to help flirting with her either.

 

It had only taken about five minutes for him and Jon to change into their swimsuits and raid their minibar, but that was long enough for Sansa to deny the fact that she was very quickly falling in love with Jon Snow’s broody gaze and the reluctant half-smile she seemed to pull from him. There was no denying it though now, as Sansa lounged on a pool chair, Jon sitting at the edge of it, making her a vodka lemonade.

 

“You really are impressive, I’ll give you that,” Ella said, “Great form.”

 

“What, you think I’m lying?,” Robb asked her, closing the distance between them in the pool. She backed up and felt her back at the pool’s edge. She looked up into his ocean eyes and she could see that he wasn’t.

 

“I _know_ you are,” she lied. It was too much. He was too much. This evening was too much.

 

One moment they’d been being attacked by some hick and the next they were being charmed by two Ivy League boys (Jon went to Yale, like she’d be going to, while Robb went to Dartmouth). It was all a bit too much for a girl to take.

 

“You know what I think about you, Myrcella Baratheon?,” Robb asked her, a small smirk on his face.

 

“Go on then,” she said, though like a coward she dropped her gaze, playing with a sopping lock of blonde hair.

 

“I don’t think you’re as cynical as you pretend to be,” he said deadpan.

 

He really was impressive. Beautiful and brilliant and all-consuming, even now on the first night they met. She however, was never one to go down without a fight.

 

“You’d like that wouldn’t you…,” she asked him, looking up at him slowly through lowered lashes. She saw his pupils dilate and she bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.

 

“I’d hate it, actually. Innocence isn’t something to covet, it’s something to fear,” he said seriously. All of a sudden the game was gone. He was looking at her like he regretted having said it. Like he knew he’d lost.

 

Myrcella Baratheon was nothing if not a gracious victor, so she picked up both their drinks, handing him his. She raised hers towards him in a gesture of camaraderie.

 

“Well here is to innocence then. Gone, but never forgotten.”

 

“Here’s to you, Myrcella Baratheon. Be gentle with me.”

 

***

 

There was nothing quite like watching your best friend fall in love. Sansa had sat in movie theatres all her life, watching the girl meet boy, the girl lose boy, and so on and so forth. None of the movies, none of the great classic love stories or the modern rom-coms had anything on the real thing. She sat there watching Ella and Robb clink their glasses against one another, watched Ella get nervous (she who always seemed so cool was a true innocent) and swim away, watched Robb watch her for a moment as though he couldn’t quite believe his eyes.

 

She was filled with a warmth that she couldn’t blame on the vodka. She was beginning to blame it on Jon Snow though, who was so broody and quiet until she asked him about his Mum and his dog, until he told her about playing rugby and promised he’d look out for Ella in the Fall.

 

“Well so anyway…I mean it just seems a bit like a waste…,” Jon said, shyly trailing off.

 

“A waste…of….,” she goaded him, delighting in the ways his cheeks turned pink at her teasing. He who had a bandage wrapped around his bloody knuckles from defending her.

 

“Well…this…,” Jon said and then coughed, and gestured vaguely to Robb and Ella (the latter of whom had just been tossed giggling back into the water), “And that… to be honest…Robb can be _awfully_ boring,” he joked, “And well, since we are all heading to Louisville anyway…should we just…make a caravan of it?”

 

She looked into his charcoal eyes. They really were the most astonishing color, vivid and haunting all at once. They screamed trouble, even as they were begging her to trust him.

 

“Ellabelle, can you come here please?,” she said.

 

Jon grinned, knowing he’d made it past the first hurdle.

 

Sansa watched as Ella got out of the pool and Robb followed, picking up a towel off a nearby lounge chair and wrapping it around her. She looked at the way Ella blushed and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. _Oh I’ve never seen you like that._

 

“What’s up, Dovey?,” Ella asked her, plopping down on the chair next to her.

 

Robb joined her, as though he simply couldn’t not. Sansa gave him a piercing look and he looked back at her without blanching. _Brave_.

 

“So, it has been proposed, since we are all going to Louisville, and since…and mistake me if I’m wrong here Jon, since Robb is so very boring…?,” Sansa teased.

 

“Sounds about right,” Jon agreed and smiled at Ella when she burst out giggling.

 

“Well anyway, it has been proposed that we caravan, and all explore Horse Country together…,” Sansa said.

 

Ella looked at her, a silent conversation between them.

 

_Ella: Are you sure? You’re not just doing this for me?_

 

_Sansa: I love you but seriously have you seen Jon’s butt? No this is not just for you, you idiot!_

 

_Ella: Oh yes, grade-A booty._

 

_Sansa: Look at Robb’s booty!_

 

_Ella: Don’t worry, I have._

 

 

 

_Jon: Can we do this too?_

 

_Robb: Ella smells good._

 

_Jon: Dude you’re not a wolf, stop sniffing her or you’ll freak them out._

 

_Robb: What’s that flowery smell? Chamomile?_

 

_Jon: Can you even hear me?_

 

_Robb: And she’s so charming_

 

_Jon: Okay, yup, just uh, talking to myself here._

 

 

“Well…,” Ella said, “I suppose we wouldn’t mind a bit of company…”

 

“That is, of course, if you’ll take us horseback riding,” Sansa cut in.

 

“Are you kidding, of _course_ we will,” Robb said, “We’ve been riding since we were five. Our gear is all ready in the car.”

 

“Ours too,” Ella said with a smile.

 

“Well here is to Louisville,” Jon said.

 

“To Louisville,” the new friends cheers’ed.

 

***

 

Official Police Report:

 

Murder weapon: An antique riding crop


	5. Baccarat; Voltaire

“What is that bright light?,” Sansa asked.

 

Ella smirked, “That Dovey, would be the sun…”

 

“It’s taunting me…,” Sansa moaned, tucking her legs up underneath her and hiding under her wide brimmed hat.

 

“Awww only another hour to Louisville and to _Jonnnn Snowwwwww_ ,” Ella said, imitating the cooing tone Sansa had taken to using with Jon when he carried her to their suite the night before.

 

She probably deserved the squirt of water Sansa sent her way from her water bottle.

 

In truth, Ella’s head wasn’t _exactly_ clear either, but she felt a good deal better than Sansa who had suggested an ‘after party in the hotel lobby’. No one had the heart to tell her that there had been no _actual_ party, and she and Robb had taken to doing shots while Jon tried to make Ella reconsider taking Sociology 101 with Professor Tarly her first semester.

 

“Like you’re any better: _Robb Stark you really are impressive,_ ” Sansa said five minutes later, proof indeed of her hangover.

 

Ella blushed, “Well he _is_ impressive. Rather ballsy, really.”

 

“Or just madly in love with you,” Sansa countered.

 

“In the space of an evening? Not exactly discerning then, is he?,” Ella said, hating the knot in her stomach at the thought of him being the kind of boy who fell in love with a different girl every night.

 

She focused on the road, because really, it shouldn’t bother her. They were all going to Louisville together and then the boys were heading North to Chicago while they went South to Nashville. It was just one more evening and then they’d head their separate ways and Robb Stark’s blue eyes would look at a different girl like she was the only thing he’d ever care to see again.

 

Ella stepped on the gas. It was better this way. Really it was.

 

***

 

Sansa’s head was still pounding when they arrived at The Grand Louisville Hotel, but it was certainly helped by the lemon water the concierge brought her while the bellhop took her and Ella’s bags.

 

“Call your mother,” Sansa said when she felt her strength returning.

 

“That sounds like an efficient way to ruin a perfectly good afternoon… you know though, she really hasn’t been contacting me much, I wonder wh- oh hello slowpokes!,” she said, giving their companions a grin when they came into the lobby.

 

 _They certainly travel more lightly_ , Sansa thought, looking at the duffels Robb and Jon each had with them. The bellhop had had to grab a second cart to bring everything of theirs up to their suite.

 

“Says the person that makes _light_ jealous,” Robb said. They all turned and looked at him and he rubbed the bridge of his nose, “Fuck that was lame, I’m really hungover. You, Stone, are evil and also my favorite drinking partner of all time.”

 

“Literally same, Stark,” Sansa returned, “Lemon water?”

 

“God yes…,” Robb said and plopped down next to her and took the glass gratefully.

 

“ _What should we do with them?_ ” she heard Ella whisper.

 

“ _Maybe we should let them have a quick nap?_ ”, Jon returned, casting very obvious nervous glances at her and Robb.

 

“We are hungover. Not deaf,” Robb said.

 

Only Jon looked caught out, but Ella only turned with a scowl on her face. “Well get _over_ it Stark. This is our last night together. Do we really want to waste it sulking in a hotel lobby?”

 

Robb hopped up as if from centrifugal force, “I’m up, I can do it, I can… _oh god Stone I’m going to crazy murder you_.”

 

“That was uh…some effort,” Jon said with a smirk, though his gaze fell to hers and he looked at her sympathetically. It made her insides turn gooey and her cheeks turn warm.

 

Ella rolled her eyes, walking over and magnanimously taking Sansa by both hands and pulling her up, supporting most of her weight.

 

“I think it’s obvious what is needed here troops. Hair. Of. The. Dog,” Ella said triumphantly. “Meet us down here in a half hour? Dress to impress.”

 

***

 

_Note to self: Challenge boys much more often._

 

Ella couldn’t help but be impressed by the way Robb and Jon cleaned up. She wouldn’t have been surprised if those duffel bags only contained t shirts and swim suits, but when she and Sansa arrived back in the hotel lobby, Jon was wearing grey trousers and a fitted white button down, the top two buttons undone, and Robb was wearing light blue khakis, a purple and white button down on with the sleeves rolled, revealing his suntanned, toned forearms.

 

“My god,” Jon said when he saw Sansa. She had donned a light pink strapless sundress, pulling her hair into an elegant low ponytail. Ella had dusted her cheeks with highlighter and she seemed to glow from within, her normally ivory skin warmed from the sun. She was utterly breathtaking.

 

“Don’t give him all the credit, Ella chose the dress,” Sansa said with a blush.

 

Ella smiled at Robb, “How’s that head of yours?”

 

“Cloudy,” he returned.

 

Robb was looking at her in that way of his. It made her grateful she’d made the effort to pull her hair back into a half-up style, letting a few tendrils graze her face. She wore a navy blue knit sundress and gold sandals, her only make-up a bit of gold eyeshadow at the corners of her eyes.

 

He offered her his crooked elbow and she took it wordlessly. Jon and Sansa followed them out into the warm, summer, early evening air and Ella felt weightless.

 

Nobody discussed where they were going but Robb led her down the cobblestone street of the old city. After winding their way through the main drive and down a few side streets he knocked three times on a door that looked like it would be more at home on the Titanic.

 

A slit opened, “Baccarat.”

 

“Voltaire,” Robb returned.

 

Just like that a door was opened and Robb lead her down the stairs.

 

She’d gotten the date wrong but only by a decade. Girls in flapper costumes and men in bowl hats served drinks out of teacups and soup cannisters, on a low stage a couple did the charleston. The patrons were of all ages, grandmothers in their diamonds next to the young jetset polo-crowd.

 

“You really are impressive,” she said to Robb.

 

“Oh Baratheon, we are just getting started,” Robb said. He used the crowded speakeasy as an excuse to take her hand and lead her through, up to the bar.

 

“You’re pretty darlin’, but come back in a couple of years,” the bartender said dismissively.

 

“Oh come _on_ , the spooks are onto me… can’t a girl hideout for a while?,” she returned conspiratorially like a femme fatale in a film noir.

 

“Oh Stark you are in trouble,” the bartender said with a roll of his eyes and set about making them cocktails though they hadn’t ordered anything.

 

“Should we get something for Sans-“, she asked looking around for a menu but stopped when Robb tapped her on the arm. She followed his gaze to where Sansa was teaching Jon the charleston.

 

Robb looked so bewildered seeing his friend dancing (rather clumsily, admittedly) that Ella couldn’t help but smile. The bartender placed two pale green drinks down in front of them.

 

“If you were smart, Stark, you’d tell her these match her eyes…,” the bartender said.

 

“If _you_ were smart, you’d know nothing could,” Robb countered. She felt that one all the way down in her toes.

 

He raised his glass to her and she held up hers.

 

“To our last night,” she volunteered, trying to keep her voice light.

 

“To a great night,” Robb amended.

 

They clinked glasses and she took a sip. It wasn’t like anything she’d ever tasted before, but it went down smooth and warmed her stomach from within, making her feel weightless once again.

 

All around them the party was raging, Jon Snow was dancing, and Ella Baratheon found that she couldn’t look anywhere other than Robb Stark’s eyes.

 

***

 

Sansa realized at 12:03, as a new day was ushered in that she and Ella had a great deal to fear from Jon Snow and Robb Stark.

 

The boys were the picture of gallant, from the heroic way they’d saved them (Jon had later confessed that Robb had been fighting off two inside while Jon took care of her assailant), to the way Jon had (according to Ella) so sweetly carried Sansa to their room the night before, to the shy, hopeful way Jon held her waist in his hands and she taught him dance after dance.

 

So it was not as though they had given them great cause to fear them. It was only that they were so very good at separating them.

 

Sansa and Ella had long been considered two halves of a whole. There wasn’t a party they hadn’t entered by each others side, and the staff at the yacht club never batted an eyelash when Sansa charged something to the Baratheon tab, while Ella had been known to have tea with Sansa’s mother when she was in need of advice. Yet, these boys had an uncanny ability to separate them. She wasn’t even sure who had chosen who, and in the end, it didn’t seem as though there was even a choice to be made.

 

So while it had not exactly surprised Sansa to find a text from Ella when she and Jon reached the bar at 12:02, saying that she and Robb had decided to take a stroll and that she would see her back at the room and not to worry, because she was very perfectly alright, it had caused her to contemplate the great amount of danger that both girls were in. The greatest danger any girl could be in - that of falling in love for the first time.

 

“It appears they’ve gone home,” she told Jon as he sipped his whiskey, looking at her with that divet between his eyebrows that he seemed to get when he was concerned for her.

 

“Back to New England?,” he joked. It was not the first joke he’d made with her, but she got the sense that it not a habit of his.

 

She smiled, “Not quite so far as that, just to the twenty-first century…”

 

“Ah a short trip then,” Jon said and took another sip, the brown liquid disappearing. His Adam’s Apple bobbed as he did and Sansa found herself questioning how he could be only twenty. He seemed such a man already, it made her feel impossibly girlish. It was dizzying and she never wanted to feel steady again.

 

She took a demure sip of her cocktail. She wasn’t exactly sure how the bartender had known, but he’d made her some sort of lemon drink, with a hint of vodka and something else that crackled delightfully on the tongue.

 

“Should we make our way back as well?,” she asked.

 

“I suppose we should,” he said, and there was regret in his voice. Nevertheless he plopped down a few bills on the bar, and seemingly without much thought took her hand.

 

It was warm in Louisville that evening, but Sansa shivered as they exited the speakeasy. The place had been so filled with bodies that a sheen had taken residence on her skin and so the light breeze chilled her more than it should have. Jon, sensing this, took her protectively under his arm.

 

It was not lost upon Sansa that it was entirely too soon to feel this amount of comfort with a boy. She and Ella had been often admired in their hometown but rarely approached, it was only an odd upperclassmen who had the nerve to try to paw at one of them or offer a sloppy kiss. The pair had become very good at sensing these intrusions and avoiding them, and so it happened that the two most beautiful girls their sleepy town had ever seen, left high school with all of the innocence they had entered with.

 

This innocence had given Sansa at least an uneasiness when it came to boys. She often felt too tall or too formal, something entirely _other_ to the Margery Tyrell’s of the world who always knew just the right thing to say. So it was very strange that when Jon eased his arm around her, in a way that was protective, even a bit possessive, but falling short of presumptuous, that she felt entirely comfortable leaning into his embrace.

 

They took the direct route back to the hotel. The air was humid and she was grateful for the structure of her dress, the silk number she’d nearly chosen would have clung to her uncomfortably. The streetlights gave off a hazy glow and though they had very much reentered the modern world, it didn’t quite feel like it with the stars shining so brightly and the smell of lilacs in the air.

 

If the concierge was surprised to see a couple who had arrived separately reenter the hotel intertwined, he had too long been in his role to show it. He simply nodded to them deferentially, as though everything were perfectly wonderful. Though Sansa would normally blush, she couldn’t disagree, and so she gave him a cheeky grin as the elevator doors closed.

 

“Something funny?,” Jon asked, turning towards her.

 

“Your eyes,” Sansa said. She’d only had one drink, but she was drunk on dancing and streetlamps and him.

 

“What’s so funny about my eyes?,” he asked her, catching her gaze. She wished she’d chosen something else, because she couldn’t find anything funny about the way he was looking at her now. It was with a mixture of desire and regret, for what she couldn’t say, and she suddenly found it difficult to breathe.

 

Sansa Stone rarely lied. She wasn’t particularly good at it and looking at Jon, she found that she couldn’t bring herself to do it now, even if it was the wiser choice.

 

The elevator dinged, they had reached the fifth floor where her and Ella’s suite was located. She and Jon went on looking at each other, and didn’t stop when Jon thrust his arm out to stop the doors from closing again. Jon stepped forward, his arm still out.

 

“I asked you a question, Sansa,” he said gruffly.

 

“They never stop moving when they look at me,” Sansa confessed, “As though you’re trying to see everything all at once…”

 

“It’s not that I’m trying to see everything…,” he said, “It’s only that I’m afraid of missing something.”

 

There was something behind that statement. Something ancient and strong that Sansa felt coming alive deep in her bones, like a flower blooming after a long winter.

 

She closed the distance between them and pressed her lips to his softly. When she moved her head back to look at him, he closed the distance once again, his hand wrapping around her back and crushing her to him.

 

The elevator doors closed and suddenly she was being brought higher and higher, until she couldn’t remember what it was like for her feet to touch the ground.

 

***

 

At some point in her life, every girl will feel like the single brightest thing in the world. It may be only for a moment, it could be a year, but in that time she will feel like each and everything is possible, and it will feel as though the whole world were simply waiting for her to enjoy it.

 

So was it that Ella Baratheon, who was every day one of the brighter things in the world, walked down the sleepy streets of old Louisville with a languid form of hysteria bubbling in her veins. The light breeze felt strong enough to carry her and the air was thick with moisture, it had the promise of a storm coming on, a great summer one in which the sky would turn purple and the droplets of rain would fall like absolution. She was in the company of a boy who shone with a brightness all his own, a rare one who could keep up with her, and who it could be argued, was the one setting the pace.

 

“It feels as though we are swimming home,” Robb said, and there was a sheen on his fine cheekbones where the air had chosen to land.

 

“We could dance instead,” she said, because she for one, would not let a little humidity dull the evening.

 

She had said it in jest, but soon she found herself in Robb Stark’s embrace. If she’d been asked how her hand had ended up on his shoulder she would not have been able to say, but she didn’t have much time to think about it as Robb lead her backwards in a waltz.

 

“Is this what they teach you at Dartmouth?,” she teased.

 

“Oh they’d never let anyone into Dartmouth who didn’t already know how to waltz,” he teased back.

 

“And here all Yale cared about was my SAT scores…,” she sighed, a blush rising on her cheeks when he spun her, the skirt of her dress billowing out and her golden curls taking flight.

 

“You could have been a Dartmouth girl, with feet like those,” he said as he pulled her in once again.

 

“You can’t just go around talking about a girl’s feet,” she chided.

 

“Which feature would you prefer I compliment?,” he asked her, “Or should I list them alphabetically?”

 

She looked up to give him a smart retort, something that would keep him at bay a little while yet, he was Apollo to her Daphne and the moment he caught her the game would be done. But she found when she looked at him that there was nothing smart in her brain, something that had never occurred before, and his eyes were so very blue and his hand felt so strong and certain on her waist.

 

She did something she’d never done before, something her mother had always warned her not to do. She leaned up and she kissed him.

 

For a single moment, everything was perfect, and then just like that, it wasn’t. She was out of his arms and he had backed away and before she could ask him why a great crack of lightning lit up the night’s sky and a deep thunder shook the very heavens just as she’d predicted.

 

There was regret in his eyes as the first rain drops fell, though whether he regretted kissing her or stopping it she couldn’t quite be sure.

 

“Come, let’s get you out of the rain,” he said, but there was a formalness that had replaced their earlier ease. Dumbly, she allowed him to usher her back. It was only then she realized that they had only been steps from the hotel at that point.

 

“You better batten down the hatches,” Robb said jovially to the concierge. The concierge smiled at her sympathetically and she hated him for it, so she breezed by them both to enter the elevator.

 

Robb followed her in silently and the elevator seemed to be crawling at a sadistically slow pace. All she wanted in that moment was to put on her silk pajamas and lay her head in Sansa’s lap so that her best friend could tell her that Robb Stark was the silliest boy in the world and that Chicago could _have_ him because there were a great deal of cities and even more boys waiting for them.

 

The elevator door mercifully opened and Robb moved to get out with her.

 

“I’m perfectly capable of seeing myself to my room, thank you,” she said because if he was going to be formal with her than she would show him the formality of the Daughters of the American Revolution.

 

“O-of course,” he said, “It’s only that…”

 

“That what?,” she asked, hating herself for having hope even now. It shouldn’t matter anyway, they’d be parting ways come morning.

 

“That it seems like a shame to part like this, after…,” he said but trailed off, as though he had just realized they’d only known each other a day.

 

“I suppose it will have to do,” she said, and didn’t wait for the elevator doors to close before turning on her heel and heading towards her suite.

 

Though she would like nothing more than to crawl into Sansa’s comforting arms, she was grateful that her friend wasn’t there, hoping that she was still dancing too close with Jon and keeping the demons at bay a little while longer.

 

She washed her face and brushed her teeth, pulling on the white silk men’s pajamas and letting her hair out of its pins. She went to turn the kettle in the little kitchen on, thinking that she’d make herself some tea and watch an old movie while she waited for Sansa to return. However, before she could there was a knock on the door.

 

“Coming Dovey,” she said, figuring Sansa had lost her key in the happiness of the evening.

 

She opened the door to find Robb Stark standing there, with something akin to fury in his eyes. The look scared her but she let him in anyway. She was a Lannister through and through, she would not air her laundry in the hallway of a five star hotel.

 

“What is it?,” she asked as she closed the door behind him.

 

“It appears our friends are making themselves comfortable in my room,” he said with an annoyance that she couldn’t entirely understand.

 

“Well I’m sorry if my company is so _abhorrent_ to you that you can’t stand to be around me, but I see no reason why they shouldn’t enjoy themselves,” she said.

 

“You do a lot of stupid things, for a girl as bright as you,” he said, and even though his tone was harsh, she could have cried with relief because it lacked the formality he’d adopted with her since the rain started.

 

“Like what?,” she asked, fixing him with a challenging stare and drawing herself up to her full height.

 

“Like thinking there is a man in the world that could do anything but crave your company,” he said, and crossed to her. She couldn’t help it, he stalked her like a predator and so she backed away like prey, “Like letting a man you don’t know into your hotel room.”

 

He was looking at her like he meant to devour her, but there was something else there, something innocent and hopeful and even a little bit scared, and it made her feel beautiful and brilliant and bold.

 

“You’re a boy, not a man,” she argued, though there was nothing boyish in the way his body surrounded her.

 

“If only that were true, Ella, there might be hope for you yet,” he said.

 

There was a threat in those words, but since they were followed by the pressure of his lips against hers she ignored it.

 

When he carried her to the bed she realized that whether Robb Stark was a boy or a man didn’t really matter, for whatever he was, she had fallen hopelessly in love with him.

 

***

 

Official Police Report:

 

Exhibit C:

 

Men’s white silk pajamas

 

_The shirt stained with blood belonging to Myrcella Baratheon, female, age eighteen_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not to be *that* author but I'd love your feedback! Hope you're enjoying xx


	6. Wild Horses

The sun had turned vicious as they crossed into Tennessee, and so they’d bought milkshakes and fetched their wide-brimmed hats when they stopped for gasoline. They hadn’t spoken much since they’d left a few hours earlier, when they’d driven off leaving Jon and Robb watching them go, duffle bags slung over their shoulders.

 

Like everything with them, their silence was a comfortable one and neither girl felt any great rush to question the other on the events of the night before, nor any desire to share their own secrets.

 

Sansa still felt the evening on her skin, and she knew that the moment she shared it with Ella it would begin to retreat, until it would slip through her fingers like smoke. Ella too seemed dazed from her place in the passenger seat, and every so often Sansa would see her press her fingers to her lips.

 

Jon and Sansa’s goodbye had lasted the better part of the morning. He had woken her at dawn, his face buried in her red locks, his hands roaming the paths of her body. Their eyes were still closed when he took her for the first time of the day and she found that she liked her body most when it lay beneath his. It felt to her as though she had aged quite a lot in the past day, yet she had never felt more new.

 

She smiled to herself as she remembered the words he’d whispered to her as they hugged goodbye, the types of words that could only be shared by young lovers in the first hours of passion, when everything is at its most dizzying and desperate.

 

“Sans watch it!,” Ella cried not cruelly but with fear in her voice. Sansa snapped to and saw that a red mustang had nearly rammed into the side of the car.

 

Sansa shot a glare at the driver and increased her speed. Not a moment later the red mustang was at their side once again.

 

The two girls were alert now, broken out of their reveries and calling to mind the fear of the night in Ohio, before they’d been rescued by Jon and Robb, as they barrelled their way down the highway. The Mustang seemed intent on keeping pace with them, every groan of the engine was met with another, fiercer one from the car in the next lane.

 

“Hang back,” Ella suggested.

 

Sansa did as she was told and noticed Ella taking out her phone and jotting down the license plate number. Soon though, the car fell back in beside them, having slowed in sympathy with them.

 

Sansa felt a knot in her stomach and an uncanny desire for Jon’s arms. The windows of the Mustang were tinted, and so it was impossible to tell who resided within. She couldn’t imagine the picture she and Ella must make for them, two teenage girls in a $100,000 car, with wide brimmed hats and designer sunglasses covering their features.

 

“Hi - yes, my name is Myrcella Baratheon, yes, that Baratheon. I’d like to report a suspicious vehicle, we are on I-65 and it is a red Mustang. Yes, I do have the license number - Dovey quick take exit 200- yes yes I’m sorry, it is 64-“

 

Sansa listened to the rest of the conversation between Ella and the 911 operator. Their follower had not realised their intention soon enough and so as they exited the highway she felt comfortable easing to a slower speed. The GPS was barking at them to get back on the highway but she pulled off to the side of the road, miles of corn to their right and breathed deeply.

 

“Here, drink this,” Ella said, handing her a still cold water bottle. “That was _creepy_. I’m googling our location, we can’t be far from Nashville…maybe should just take backroads from now-hold on, hello?,” she said with a small smile as she answered the phone. “What do you miss me al-,” the flirtatious lilt in her voice ended abruptly, “…Twenty miles outside of Nashville. Yes exit 200 how did you? Robb what are you? No Sansa is…Look Ro- you’ve got a lot of nerve…,” she huffed and shook her head at Sansa with a roll of her eyes.

 

Sansa wanted to take part in her annoyance but she was finding all of this very confusing, and couldn’t stop from looking in the rearview, stupidly expecting at any moment to see a red mustang pulling up behind them.

 

“Yes that _is_ where my Uncle Jaime would take me. Robb you’re really starting to scare me,” Ella said though she didn’t look scared she just looked angry and a bit confused. A rarity for her. “No. That’s right I said _no_. Perhaps it is not in the vocabulary of Dartmouth girls. Drive Sansa. _Drive_. I sincerely doubt that. Mmmhm, yes goodbye.”

 

With that Ella started blasting The Kills through the speakers, which drove the point home loud and clear that Sansa was not to ask questions because Robb Stark would _not_ be discussed.

 

It wasn’t until Sansa was handing the keys to the valet at The Huntington Arms that Ella turned her and said: “They’ll be here in a half hour. Feel free to meet them, but I will be in the pool.”

 

***

 

It would be obvious to anyone who knew Ella Baratheon that she was in trouble.

 

Though she was only eighteen, she’d been blessed with a regality from an early age that had caused the adults around her to treat her far beyond her years, and so out of both opportunity and necessity, she had grown up rather quickly. That being said, she had been so terribly busy with schoolwork and ballet and horseback riding, not to mention familial obligations, that there had never been any boy that had turned her head. Sure, there had been a mild flirtation with Trystane Martell the summer she was 14, but that was more to get a rise out of her mother than anything else. So it was, that she found herself in uncharted territory, because Ella Baratheon was absolutely, and infuriatingly, besotted with Robb Stark.

 

She refused to think about the night before as she dove into the pool, allowing the cool water to numb her mind as she moved across it in a perfect freestyle. She wore a light pink one-piece bathing suit with a scallop trim and a low back, and her golden hair trailed freely behind her. If anyone had asked she would have told them that she had no intention of any of this _pleasing_ Robb, but only torturing him.

 

She knew he’d arrived a full five laps before she did anything about it, and when she did decide, she exited the pool on the opposite end, taking her time to ring out her hair and wrap it elegantly in a towel, pulling on her sunglasses and sheer white lace robe. She looked more like a Hollywood starlet in Capri than a New England girl in Nashville and she made a meal of the walk over to the encampment.

 

Jon, at least, looked amused and so she placed both hands on his shoulders and pressed a kiss to his cheek which he returned warmly. Without a glance at Robb she sat down in a cushioned lounge chair and crossed her legs, twice. If her robe happened to show off her ballet toned thigh, who was she to stop it and instead propped up her elbow so that she might rest her chin in her palm.

 

“So, did you get lost on your way to Chicago?,” she asked, addressing Robb for the first time.

 

If he was handsome when he was smiling, he was intoxicating when he was angry and she had made his hackles rise.

 

“What kind of stunt are you pulling?,” he asked her and to her surprise it stung. This was not the voice that had whispered against her skin into the early hours of the morning.

 

“Let me get this straight. You have the audacity to follow us to Nashville, to _demand_ to know exactly where I am, to regurgitate some fact about me and my uncle, to show up at _our_ hotel and ruin a perfectly good afternoon and you think that it is me who owes _you_ an explanation?,” she asked as calmly as she was able. It turned her voice positively icy and it comforted her.

 

It was Jon who spoke, but not to her. He directed his words at Sansa who had been sitting silently at her side.

 

“There’s something you should know. We’re with Night’s Watch Security… Cersei Lannister hired us, to protect you this summer. But it goes further than that. Our superiors wouldn’t want you to know this, but that man in the Mustang…our guys have been following him for weeks.”

 

“Who is he?,” Sansa asked Robb. She, it seemed, couldn’t seem to look at Jon, probably questioning every touch, every kiss, as Ella was doing now.

 

“Technically, he is your uncle. He married a Miss Lysa Arryn, formerly Lysa Tully. It appears he knew your mother as a child, and… has not lost the attachment,” Robb said delicately. He looked like he wanted to cover Sansa’s body with his own, to pull her into his lap and let her cry and keep every monster away from her. It was annoying, because it meant Ella couldn’t hate him, because she wanted to do the same.

 

“It’s worse than that. Now I shouldn’t be telling you this, our orders were to keep our distance, to watch over you as you had a carefree summer vacation, but that’s over now. Because it’s you, Sansa. He’s coming for you.”

 

***

 

Official Police Report:

 

The body was found in a Mustang (Red) registered to Petyr Baelish.


	7. You lack imagination

“Ella you can’t do this!,” Robb was arguing as Ella rifled through her suitcase for appropriate clothes to travel in.

 

Ella paid him no mind, pulling out a pair of white jeans, a navy blue tank top and a camel coloured pair of flip-flops.

 

Sansa and Jon were sitting on opposite beds, facing the two of them, though not really looking. Sansa hadn’t said anything after slapping Jon across the face at the pool. There wasn’t really anything more to say.

 

Ella picked up her things and went into the bathroom, slamming the door shut. Robb ran his fingers through his hair and shot Sansa a pleading look, but after realising this would get him nowhere he took to banging on the door.

 

“Robb - you can’t do that, this is a five star hotel. She’s safe in there just…just give her a minute,” Jon finally said and it made Sansa’s stomach turn how caring he sounded.

 

Robb paced back and forth, picking up the towel Ella had discarded on the floor and folding it angrily before throwing it back down on the floor.

 

When Ella came out she was the picture of calm, her swimsuit in one of the laundry bags the hotel provided. Her hair had been pulled into a top knot and her tanned shoulders were dotted in tiny freckles. She zipped up her suitcase and turned to Sansa with a bright smile.

 

“Ready, Dovey?,” she asked, as though there were not two very angry and concerned boys in the room with them. Not boys. Men. Men who had been contracted to protect them.

 

“Ella-,“ Jon started.

 

“My mother’s employees usually call me Miss Baratheon,” she said icily. Only Sansa could see the way her jaw set, a clear sign that she was holding back tears.

 

“Stop being such a little brat!,” Robb finally exploded. “We lied, alright? We. Lied. Your mother didn’t want you to know, it was part of the contract. Can we jus-“

 

“Did my mother employ you to sleep with me as well? Was that a specific clause or was it in the fine print?,” Ella asked curiously, as though she were asking if a salad came with grilled salmon.

 

If it weren’t for Sansa’s seething anger in that moment, she would have laughed at the way Jon audibly gasped. Robb only looked at Ella, opening and closing his mouth the same way Jon had looked at her when she’d slapped him.

 

“El-,”

 

“Miss Baratheon,” Ella corrected.

 

“You’ll have to pay for that,” Sansa pointed out, gesturing to the wall that Robb had just put his fist through.

 

“Good thing my mother pays well,” Myrcella said as she dialed down to the front desk. “Yes, hello, Suite 503, oh lovely thank you, yes could you kindly send up a bellhop? Unfortunately Miss Stark and I will be checking out early. No no, it’s only there are some unpleasant memories here. Thank you.”

 

There was silence when she hung up the phone. Robb stood where he had smashed his fist into the wall, Jon sat at the edge of one bed, looking forward unseeing, and Sansa picked at the bedspread wondering how it had all gone wrong so quickly.

 

“You realise I can’t let you leave, don’t you?,” Jon finally asked when she stood up. She hadn’t yet unpacked, so it was only her hat she needed to fetch from the closet.

 

“There is no way for you to make us stay,” she said lifelessly. She suddenly felt so very tired.

 

“You need our protection more than I thought if that’s what you think,” Robb said.

 

“Did you just threaten her?,” Ella rounded on him.

 

“No, _Miss Baratheon,_ what is it going to take to make you realise that we are here to PROTECT you?,” Robb said.

 

Whatever Ella was going to retort was interrupted by the bellhop’s arrival. The girls called their bluff, wagering that they would not make a scene.

 

They left the door to the suite open when they left, and followed the bellhop into the elevator.

 

When they arrived in the lobby there was a man at the front desk that seemed vaguely familiar, he had grey hair and a pointed chin, but it was his eyes she remembered.

 

 _Petyr Baelish_ , she thought, but then her world went black as a hand covered her mouth.

 

***

 

She’d been separated from Sansa, that much was clear. Wherever she’d been put was dark and smelled vaguely of cleaning supplies. She tried the door but it rattled to no avail.

 

It was Robb who had taken her, she was sure of it. She had smelled his now familiar scent as his hand came around her mouth, and she recognised the strength of his arms as he carried her away.

 

She could have sworn that Sansa had gone to grab her hand before it all happened, but she’d been in the closet so long that she wasn’t entirely sure. The fumes were getting to her and she felt a droplet of sweat trailing down the side of her face.

 

She never should have challenged him. She should have known, she had _seen_ it in his eyes. Robb would never let her go, he had told her so himself.

 

He wouldn’t have left her here to teach her a lesson would he? That was so…so…

 

***

He wasn’t sure where Jon had gone with Sansa, but he knew she was safe. Jon would never leave her, and not only because she was his responsibility.

 

It had killed him to leave Ella, but he knew the only way to keep her safe was to get her out of the way. She was so _strong_ , so fiercely protective of Sansa that she probably would have gone up to Baelish himself without a thought for her own safety.

 

He had only been gone from the lobby for 30 seconds, but that was enough for Baelish to disappear. A quick survey of the parking lot told him he hadn’t left the hotel’s premises.

 

If Jon had been with him, they could have tag-teamed the concierge so that they could figure out his room number, but Jon wasn’t there, so he took to stalking the halls. The hotel was bustling with activity, but other than a marital spat in room 204 there was nothing of note seemingly going on.

 

Robb wanted nothing more than to find Petyr Baelish, to punch him until his knuckles bled before turning him into the police. Baelish could be linked to two murders they knew of, and there were rumours that he dealt in human trafficking as well in the sex trade. And now he wanted Sansa. Sweet, beautiful, intelligent Sansa Stone, for whom Robb felt an almost brotherly need to protect. Baelish would never have her. Of that Robb could be sure.

 

He gave up more quickly than usual, knowing that he would not find Baelish just wandering around. He rushed back to the closet where he had put Ella for safe-keeping. He unlocked it using the keys he’d stolen from the bell-hop.

 

“Ella?! Ella!,” he cried when he saw her slumped against the shelf. The smell of cleaning supplies filled his nostrils and he cursed himself for not checking the room before leaving her there.

 

He pulled her out, cradling her in his arms and without thinking, got in the elevator and hit floor number 5.

 

“Ella, Ella sweetheart, wake up, wake up I’m so sorry, just _wake up_ ,” he pleaded with her. He wasn’t sure if he was apologising for leaving her, or for lying to her, or, for loving her, but he was apologising all the same.

 

Her eyelids fluttered and her jadeite eyes focused on him for a brief moment.

 

“Miss Baratheon,” she corrected before falling asleep again.

 

***

 

“Let me _out_ of this room,” she said for the hundredth time.

 

“You know I’m not going to do that,” Jon said as gently as he could.

 

“Ella is out there, _alone_ , and he is here!,” she cried and she’d never been more beautiful. She was strong and livid and so terrified that he just wanted to cradle her in his arms.

 

“Robb won’t let anything happen to her, I promise,” he said. There are some promises that bind you, some that you feel like a weight on your chest, but this was one that he hardly felt, for it was so intrinsically true. There was nothing in the world that could stop Robb from protecting Ella.

 

Jon had known it ever since Rhode Island. They’d been keeping their distance fine at that point, as the girls took off on a carefree summer roadtrip. They’d been in Newport, and Ella had come out of the ice cream shop wearing a yellow sundress, a pair of heart sunglasses covering half of her face. She held two ice cream cones and was using one of them to beckon someone forward. It soon became clear that it was the owner of the store, and he was carrying a bowl of water. Ella had smiled at him and bent down and given one of the ice cream cones to a little girl who was sitting outside with her dog. They’d watched the man begrudgingly place the bowl of water in front of the dog, and when he’d gone inside Ella and the little girl had cheers’ed ice creams as though they were glasses of champagne.

 

“We should have taken the Targaryen job,” Robb had said with a sigh, but he was watching Ella throw her head back and giggle when the dog sat in her lap and licked her ice cream cone instead of drinking the water.

 

No, there was nothing in the world that would stop Robb Stark from protecting Ella Baratheon.

 

“And what exactly do you imagine your promises are worth to me at this point?,” she asked him. She didn’t ask him meanly, or even coldly. She asked him like it was the hardest thing in the world that she’d ever had to say, and that was just as well because it was the hardest thing in the world that he’d ever had to hear.

 

He crossed to her, and tried not to crumble from the way she stepped away from him. He closed in on her, until he was nearly covering her body with his own. He remembered everything, every touch, every kiss, every whispered word as the sky turned pink that morning. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen and his heart was breaking from trying not to tell her.

 

“There will be a day not long from now when you will realise that in spite of this, in spite of this one lie, that everything I do, everything I will ever do from now on is in your service. And it isn’t because I’m being paid, or because you’re my charge, it is because you own me, Sansa Stone,” he confessed stupidly. He was out of a job already, there’d be no coming back from this, but he would not leave her side.

 

He could see her resolve crumbling, he could see it in those deep ocean eyes of hers that were so full of hurt and hope.

 

Whatever she was going to say was silenced by Robb barging in the room with Ella in his arms like a fallen deity.

 

Sansa only gave him one glance before she rushed to her friend’s side, but it was all he needed to see. It was a look that said, _You see, Jon Snow, your promises aren’t worth a damn thing._

 

***

 

Missing persons report:

 

Sansa Stone

 

18 years old

 

female

 

red hair, blue eyes


	8. Yes, we have no bananas

The room was light and airy when she woke. She was propped up on a soft bed with pillows and she felt someone holding her hand.

 

Her nostrils burned and she took greedy, large breaths of fresh air and she felt movement in the room though she'd not yet had the courage to open her eyes. When she did, she saw that it was Sansa, beautiful, alive and unharmed that was holding her hand and tears stubbornly filled her eyes.

 

"Dovey," she said, fighting to sit up, "You're...," but she felt so weak and sunk back into the pillows feeling defeated already.

 

Before she knew it a different hand was there, pressing the palm to her forehead. She looked into the most beautiful, caring pair of blue eyes she'd ever seen and sighed.

 

"Robb," she said dreamily. His smile was so heartbreakingly grateful, and she felt his warm palm press gently against her before stroking her cheek.

 

But then it all came back to her. The man on the road, and the confrontation at the pool, the fight in their suite, and the man in the lobby. Then a dark, small space and the putrid smell of chemicals.

 

"He's...here and you're...," she said looking at Robb.

 

She knew she wouldn't make it through the rest of that statement and she pushed with all of her strength off the bed, sprinting into the bathroom and slamming the door. She wretched more than she knew she possessed and collapsed in a slump with her cheek against the cool tile of the bathroom floor.

 

She wasn't sure how long she lay on the floor, but when the door opened she was surprised to see Jon instead of Sansa. _Brave and stupid_ , she thought idly.

 

She picked herself up, refusing to be weak in front of him, he who had lied to her, who had lied to her best friend, but when she felt his hands lifting her up she couldn't help it. She turned towards him and buried her face against his chest. His strong arms came around her and he rubbed her back.

 

"There, there, it's all going to be alright Miss Baratheon," he said gently.

 

Something about him honoring her request, and the very fact that she'd so dramatically _made_ such a request struck her as incredibly funny and she let out a snort into his chest.

 

"Did you just... _snort, Miss Baratheon_?," Jon asked and she could hear the smile in his voice.

 

This only egged her on and she let out a giggle from deep in her belly. She knew she looked manic, but he must have been feeling the hysteria of the past few days too for he also let out a laugh and soon there were tears running down his face. The thought of what Robb and Sansa must be thinking in the other room only made the whole thing funnier and soon she was clutching her sides from the pain of it all.

 

When they finally quieted she took the toothbrush and toothpaste he held in his hands and brushed slowly and purposefully. He stood behind her, and she had the instant understanding that he would stand guard all night if she requested, and all the next day too. That he would stand behind her while she went about her life if she only asked, if she only could bear needing him.

 

She splashed some cold water on her face and patted it dry with a soft hotel towel.

 

When she was done she turned to him, her hysteria now gone and she said, "He's here."

 

"He's here," Jon affirmed.

 

"We have to protect her," Ella said. Nothing could happen to Sansa.

 

"We're going to protect you both," Jon vowed.

 

"I'm not worried about me," she said, waving him away. The events of the past hour aside, she could handle herself, and if the choice came between her and Sansa, it wouldn't be a chance. She would always choose Sansa.

 

"I know you're not," he said with a sigh, as though long-suffering. "But I am. And Robb -"

 

"Let's not go there," she said. She could forgive Jon, she couldn't _not_ forgive Jon. For her things anyway. She wasn't sure she'd ever forgive him for Sansa. But Robb...how was she supposed to forgive someone who broke her heart?

 

"It's my job to protect you, Ella. The best way I know how to do that is to tell you everything, because it's obvious that keeping things from you isn't an option. So know this, you don't have to forgive Robb, but this isn't a job to him. It hasn't been for some time. Basically the moment he saw you. So you don't have to forgive him or even be nice to him, but don't push him away. You'll never be safer with anyone than you are with him."

 

"Not even you?"

 

"Not even me. That's how I know."

 

***

 

She wasn't exactly sure what had transpired between Ella and Jon in the bathroom, but when they came out Ella had more color in her cheeks and there was an ease between the two of them that made Sansa feel like an outsider.

 

Ella sat on the bed next to her though and took her hand, pressing her slender arm against her as though to say _It's still you and me._

 

"So we've got a little situation," Ella said calmly. They all waited with baited breath until she finally continued, "I'm _starving_. What do you say, Dovey? I'm thinking barbecue."

 

Sansa couldn't help but smile and she felt her own stomach rumble in return. She grabbed Ella's hand and the two girls stood up in unison. Their bags had been returned to the suite while Jon and Ella were in the bathroom, so Sansa grabbed a cardigan out of hers while Ella pulled her sunglasses out of her handbag.

 

Jon and Robb shuffled nervously as the girls went about their business silently and it wasn’t until they neared the door that Ella turned to them and said, “Are you coming? You’ll need your energy if you’re going to protect us.”

 

Jon grinned first, he too seemed more at ease now that the two of them had made up, and Robb followed quickly, clearly not wanting to risk losing the opportunity.

 

“You girls are in for a treat, I’m taking you to the best bbq in Nashville,” he said easily.

 

“Such confidence,” Sansa joked, trying her hand at being just as informal as the rest of them, as though the afternoon hadn’t happened. As though there wasn’t a man stalking her with ill intent, as though the first boy she’d ever loved hadn’t lied to her.

 

Robb must have sensed something, because it was he who walked over to her and tentatively threw an arm around her shoulder.

 

“Come on Sansa, you’ve got nothing to be afraid of. Nobody is going to get their hands on you. I know my word means nothing to you at the moment but -,” he said.

 

“I believe you,” she said, looking up at him. As crazy as it was, she _did_ believe him. She was still furious at him for lying to Ella, for turning her head like that, which no boy had ever been able to do, but she knew that _she_ could trust him. He’d keep her safe, she knew it.

 

“Then you _also_ believe that I’m taking you to get the best brisket in Tennessee?,” he asked with a grin.

 

“Just don’t let me down, Stark,” she teased.

 

“Never again,” he vowed.

 

Ella exited the elevator first with Jon on her heels. The two were talking all about Yale, because apparently Jon _did_ in fact go there (it was why he’d been assigned to her after all), and which dorm she was hoping to be in, and which neighborhoods to avoid, and how she should never, under any circumstances drink the punch. Robb tightened his arm around her as they followed behind, and she knew that he was surveying every inch of the hotel lobby. Unthinkingly she curled closer into his body, allowing herself to be in need, to be taken care of.

 

She’d never had a brother, her father had died just after her 2nd birthday and her mother had never remarried, but if she could have chosen one it would have been Robb, even with his lies. He tugged her braid gently and when she looked up at him he goofily crossed his eyes, clearly trying to tug her out of her thoughts, and she realised that maybe fate had seen fit to give her a brother after all.

 

***

 

Bebe’s BBQ Joint was exactly how Robb remembered it. He’d been there only once before, with his father the summer he was 15, but everything from the checkered tablecloths on the picnic tables, to the 10-wipes or more chicken wings, to the honky-tonk soundtrack were the same.

 

They’d all relaxed as soon as they’d arrived. The atmosphere demanded it, and once the food had arrived their nerves had truly settled. Ella had tucked a paper towel in the neckline of Sansa’s tank top, saying only _You’ll thank me later_ and had surprised Robb when she’d ordered the _Burn baby burn_ wings with four flames on the menu. She’d been trying to get Sansa to try _just a bite_ for the better part of the meal, but Sansa had been very happy with her _Honey-Do_ boneless wings and lemonade.

 

Jon had been trying to catch Sansa’s eye for the better part of the meal, but it seemed as though there were destined to be four separate conversations going on (him and Sansa, Sansa and Ella, Ella and Jon, and him and Jon). Sansa it seemed, had forgiven him, and better yet, decided to trust him, so she’d stuck close to him all afternoon. He was relieved, he wouldn’t lie. For one thing, it gave him a purpose. For another, the girl was something else and they had a shocking amount in common.

 

“You think I _won’t,_ Snow?,” Ella asked from across the table.

 

“I _know_ you won’t, Baratheon,” Jon said with a grin.

 

“Guard my bag, Dovey,” Ella said and sauntered away from the table.

 

Jon grinned and let out a _whoop!_ as Ella walked over to a table full of rowdy locals. The men, in various states of cleanliness, all straightened up when she approached and Robb recognised the tilt of her head as the same one she’d used on the bartender in Louisville. It was the one that made her seem like innocence incarnate and sin promised all at once.

 

One of the men let out a guffaw and gestured graciously for her to sit. He signalled to the waitress who took one look at Ella and laughed at the man, before retreating back to the kitchen.

 

“Smile El!,” Sansa shouted, and Ella turned, a breathtaking smile on her soft pink lips. It was the kind of smile that years from now, when she looked at the picture of herself, eighteen and gorgeous, surrounded by men three times her age, would make her remember the warmth of the day and the smell of barbecue sauce in the air.

 

The waitress returned with a plate of peppers and two glasses of beer and set them down.

 

 _Oh no_.

 

Robb recognised those peppers from the last time he’d been here. One of the hottest in the world, he’d seen a grown man throw up into his beer after taking a bite.

 

“Ella, no!,” he shouted, standing up from the table.

 

For all her courtesy, she clearly wasn’t over it because she turned to him, a small smile on her face and took a generous bite. He could tell by the ferocity of her chewing that it was hot. Really hot. But she definitely didn’t throw up, she didn’t even break a sweat, and waited until she’d swallowed to wash it down with a delicate sip of beer.

 

“What, Stark,” she said, the smile now more genuine. “Did you want me to _save_ you some?”

 

He would give anything to hear that teasing lilt in her voice again, anything other than the hurt he’d heard before or the stiff politeness of the afternoon, so he crossed the remaining distance.

 

The gentlemen at the table did not give him as kind a welcome as they’d given her. She was the most beautiful thing most of them had ever seen and they’d been delighting in her company for a while, all set to tell their friends about the time they’d missed with the daring Yankee with elegance in her bones and sunshine in her hair.

 

He didn’t care though. He wasn’t here for them, only her. He stopped right in front of her, forcing her to look up at him and he gave her a grin of his own and picked up the rest of the pepper she’d discarded. She lowered her sunglasses to the ski-jump of her nose, looking up at him as if to say _You wouldn’t dare_.

 

But Robb Stark certainly would dare and he raised it to his lips, placing the whole thing in his mouth. It felt like wildfire on his tongue, and he felt his knees nearly buckle, but he kept on chewing, fighting the urge to grab the beer that rested in her dainty fingers.

 

“The things men do for love,” one of the men at the table said to his friend.

 

Robb finally swallowed and Ella graciously offered him the beer, which he took and immediately gulped down before catching his breath.

 

“Gentlemen,” he said, bowing as the old men clapped, “M’Lady,” he said, boldly holding his hand out to Ella. The men were harmless enough but he’d feel better when she was in arm’s distance of both him and Jon.

 

She took it with a challenging gaze and allowed him to lead her back to Jon and Sansa.

 

“So what is this, then, Stark? Anything you can do I can do better?,” she asked, tugging gently on his hand to make him stop walking.

 

She was such a presence that he’d forgotten for a moment how small she really was. The top of her head barely reached his shoulder and he could circle her waist and touch finger to finger. He looked down at her, fighting the urge to just pull her to him and kiss her. Kiss all the anger and fear right out of her.

 

“More like a ‘you jump, I jump,’ kind of thing,” he said instead.

 

She looked over at Jon and Sansa, who were very obviously not talking and sighed.

 

“I want you to promise me two things,” she said, “You promise me these two things and we are square. We’ll go on as friends, and I’ll even get Sansa to forgive Jon so that he can stop pouting, alright?”

 

It was all he wanted, except the friends bit but he wouldn’t be greedy, not now. Something about her made him know that these would not be light demands though.

 

“What are these promises?,” he asked her warily, not willing to show his hand, though he was pretty sure anything in his power was hers.

 

“The first, is that you will never, under any circumstances, lie to me again-“

 

“I prom-,” he started but she held up her hand to make him wait.

 

“And the second, is that if there ever comes a moment when you have to choose to protect Sansa or me, you choose her,” she said.

 

“Ella don’t -,” he said but was silenced by her look. It wasn’t angry or forceful. There were tears pooling unshed in her brilliant green eyes. She was scared. Terrified for Sansa. “Don’t ask me to sacrifice you.”

 

He couldn’t imagine making any choice that would put her in harm. He remembered the first time he’d seen her. She was at a bar with Sansa in New York City. There was some trust fund boy that was trying to dance with her, but Ella was wriggling her finger at the massive bartender, who shimmied his way over to her. She twirled him, and he kissed the back of her hand before heading back over to the bar. She looked so different to the other girls in the bar, so happy and carefree, so confident in her and her best friend that it didn’t quite matter what was happening around them. He’d never known light like hers.

 

“Promise me,” she pleaded, and he could see that light dimming.

 

“Okay,” he said finally, nodding his head like a 500 pound weight was attached to it.

 

“Then you, Robb Stark, are forgiven,” she said and planted a kiss on his cheek before heading back to the table.

 

He walked back to the table, feeling like a fraud. For he knew that he’d already broken one promise to her. He would do everything in his power to keep Sansa safe, he’d die to protect her, but Ella wouldn’t.

 

***

 

It had been a long day, too long, so rather than explore more the girls had wanted to go back to the hotel after their early dinner. He and Robb had trailed them as they walked arm and arm.

 

They said goodbye outside their respective suites and Ella nodded at him as if to say _I’ve got this_ as she ushered Sansa inside.

 

Once he and Robb were inside they went about setting up their surveillance and computers. They already had tapped into the hotel’s security tape and Robb started to review it, looking for signs of Baelish as Jon checked in with their boss to give him an update (leaving out a few small points, naturally).

 

Thorne wanted to send back-up immediately. Another team was in Texas searching for Baelish now, they could be here before the end of today, but Jon held him off. He didn’t want a circus descending, Baelish was too smart for that, his spies would alert him of anything out of order. Jon figured that Baelish already knew about him and Robb, which would make him cocky. He wanted him bold, it would make him easier to catch. Easier to _destroy_.

 

He took a shower, then pulled on grey sweatpants and a black v neck t-shirt. Robb had already showered and was wearing plaid pajama pants and a Dartmouth sweatshirt, looking much more suited to a dorm room than a stakeout.

 

He was looking through emails when there was a knock on the door. To his surprise it was Sansa. She’d clearly showered as well and was standing there make-up free in a plaid pajama set.

 

“H-hey,” he said. It was awkward considering how they’d started the day that he suddenly didn’t know how to speak to her, but he felt like the day had been a week and she’d been ignoring him for most of it.

 

“Can I talk to you for a minute?,” she asked, poking her head in. Robb jumped at her voice and got off the bed.

 

“I’ll uh, just go do a sweep or something,” he said.

 

“Feel free,” Sansa said as she glided into the room, “But Ella said you were welcome to join her if you didn’t mind Humphrey Bog-,” she started but Robb was already gone, out the front door and knocking on the suite next door.

 

Sansa giggled as Jon shut the door behind them, “We really could torture him with that… he’s like Pavlov’s dog when it comes to Ella,” she said.

 

Jon smirked, it was true, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say because he wanted to do was hold her in his arms and kiss her and make everything except them disappear.

 

“Did you sleep with me as part of your assignment?,” she asked suddenly.

 

Jon stared at her blankly for a moment. Of all the things that he had expected her to say, this was not one of them.

 

Jon looked at her, really looked at her, and then he felt like the biggest idiot of all time. Sansa wasn't the first girl he'd been with, but she was the first innocent. There had been Ygritte, wild and forward, and Val, gorgeous and confident. They had lead him in a dizzying dance that left him winded. It was he who had been changed, not them.

 

Sansa was different. Brilliant and sweet and gorgeous, strong and vulnerable. Yes, she had been a virgin, but it went beyond that. She was a true innocent.

 

The severity of what he'd done, what he'd made her feel like hit him all at once and he doubled over, fearing that he might be ill.

 

"Oh my god, you did," she said, as though from the grave, misunderstanding his reaction.

 

He sprung back up and closed the distance between them, taking her face in his hands.

 

" _No_ ," he said, looking into her beautiful blue eyes, “ _No_ … Sleeping with you was the stupidest thing I could have done. Really just…top notch stupid but… _you_ Sansa… it was the best night of my life.”

 

She let out a little whimper, unshed tears pooling in her eyes.

 

“The best ever?,” she asked softly.

 

“Ever,” he promised.

 

It didn’t really matter who kissed who, because once they started, neither was stopping. Sleeping with her was still the stupidest thing he could do, but he was already lost, compromised. He could never approach this objectively again, every decision he could ever make was now clouded by his love for her, and so he gave into it. And honestly, stupid had never felt so good.

 

***

 

Ella smiled when she heard the knock on the door. She answered it in a pair of pink silk boxer shirts, one of her brother Tommen’s lacrosse pinneys, and a pair of slippers.

 

“Heading out to the clubs?,” Robb teased, though he was in his pajamas too.

 

“Well dresses are _so_ last year,” she joked and let him in. She knew what Sansa was going over to ask, and she knew what Jon was going to say, so she wasn’t expecting her roommate back anytime soon.

 

“Well if anyone can pull off that look, it’s you…,” he said and despite herself she blushed.

 

They stood there looking at one another awkwardly, because there was so much to say but it felt as though she’d lived a thousand years in a single day and all she wanted was to turn off her mind.

 

“I made tea, do you want some?,” she asked him. He thanked her and she poured him a cup, allowing him to doctor it himself. “I hope you don’t mind, I was feeling the need for an old movie so I turned this on, it’s-“

 

“Sabrina,” he finished for her, gesturing to where William Holden and Audrey Hepburn were dancing cheek to cheek. Everything about it was so dreamy, from the way he looked at her, to her Givenchy gown, she could practically feel the summer air of Long Island on her skin. It was enough to make you forget she was meant to end up with Humphrey Bogart. He must have seen the surprised look she sent his way because he explained, “My mother loves old movies, and she told me that everything I ever needed to know about how to treat a woman could be learned from them.”

 

She couldn’t resist asking, “You haven’t seen Charade by any chance have you?”

 

He looked at her and it made her regret asking. He looked so wounded for a moment, but then he smiled, “I have, but I prefer How to Steal a Million.”

 

She rolled her eyes and sat on the sofa in front of the television, tucking her legs up underneath her. This was one of her favorite hotels that they’d stayed in, it was very homey.

 

“You only like that because you look a bit like Peter O’Toole,” she teased.

 

“Is that so?,” he asked, sitting on the couch as well, but at the other corner, leaving a respectful distance and resting his feet on the coffee table.

 

“Only a little,” she said, regretted saying it at all. She loved Peter O’Toole, and with his blue eyes and roguish smile he really did look a lot like Robb.

 

“Mmhm,” he nodded with a grin, seeing right through her. “You on the other hand, look nothing like Audrey Hepburn.”

 

She nudged him with her foot, digging her toe into his thigh until he let out a little yelp, “You can’t just tell a girl she doesn’t look like Audrey Hepburn…”

 

He grabbed her foot. After what they’d done the night before, it shouldn’t feel so intimate but it did. He started rubbing it, kneading her arch and looked over at her with a small smile.

 

“You can when it’s you. You don’t look like anyone,” he said.

 

“I’m a blonde with green eyes, I look like _everyone_ ,” she corrected.

 

He tugged her foot, and she unsuspecting, slid over easily until her legs were over his lap.

 

“Your hair isn’t blonde. It’s honey and wet sand and sunlight. Your eyes aren’t green, they are jade with a little bit of Lake Como in them. And you don’t smell like anyone either. Jasmine and rain water and you. You aren’t an Audrey Hepburn type or an Ingrid Bergman or even a Grace Kelly. Years from now, when a guy wants to make a girl feel special they are going to say _You even look a little like Ella Baratheon_ ,” he said, and he was still holding her, his hand wrapped around her ankle and his other across the back of the couch.

 

It was the kind of thing that no girl would ever think, but every girl would want to hear. Especially from a boy like Robb. A boy that was handsome and brilliant and funny, a boy that looked at them like at any moment the secrets of the universe might spill from their lips. But Myrcella Baratheon wasn’t every girl.

 

“You lied to me today,” she said.

 

She waited for him to deny it, but he was no ordinary boy either.

 

“I did,” he said.

 

“You promised you wouldn’t,” she said, and she could feel her lips trembling.

 

“I know,” he said.

 

She knew enough to know that she wasn’t going to get an apology from him, and it was just as well because she wouldn’t believe it if she did. The truth was, she knew it wasn’t a reasonable request. She didn’t have to ask him the question Sansa went to ask Jon because she already knew the answer. He hadn’t slept with her because of his mission but in spite of it. He slept with her because he loved her. It was as simple and as crazy as that. It had only been a few days and yet, he loved her.

 

They looked each other in the eye, and there was nothing more to say. He wouldn’t risk her and she wouldn’t risk Sansa so there was nothing to do in the moment. Audrey Hepburn was singing about bananas and their tea was getting cold and it had been a very long day. She was already nearly in his lap so she curled in, resting her head against his chest and tucking it beneath his chin. His strong arms came around her and she felt like she could breathe once again.

 

They sat like that for a long while and when she woke she was still dressed but tucked into her own bed. There was a flower on her night stand with a note underneath.

 

***

 

Official Police Report:

 

Exhibit E:

 

_Dear Ella,_

 

_I’m going on ahead to Memphis, as we’ve heard of some troubling activity. Jon will stay with you, so you’ll be safe._

 

_I cannot promise what you asked, so I will make you a different one instead. I promise I will find Baelish and put an end to this, so that it will never have to come to making a choice between you and Sansa._

 

_I promise, I promise, I promise._

 

_Your Robb_

 

_p.s. You can punish me as long as you want, but just know you say my name while you sleep. I would stay up every night just to hear you forgive me over and over again._


	9. Anything you can do

Road trips with Robb had not prepared Jon for road trips with Sansa and Ella. For one thing, Ella's car was _fun_ to drive. Far more fun than the black range rover he and Robb had been barreling in through the country. For another, Sansa and Ella took road trips very seriously, from playlists to appropriate car snacks, to knowing when they wanted to get off the highway to see something that one of them had read about. The last had driven him and Robb _crazy_ when they were trailing them, but was infinitely more enjoyable when he got to see the sights with them. For mature girls, they went absolutely mad for the World's Largest anything.

 

They'd heard from Robb who had told them not to come to Memphis, so they were nearing New Orleans, where he would be waiting for them. Jon was driving with Sansa at his side, while Ella sat in back reading _House of Mirth_. Jon was grateful Ella's car wasn't a stick shift because it meant that his right hand rested in Sansa's lap, holding her left.

 

 _“The real alchemy consists in being able to turn gold once again into something else_ ,” Ella said aloud from the back seat.

 

She’d been silent for the last hour or so, and Jon and Sansa had followed suit, listening to a dreamlike playlist that suited the rainy day. He’d learned though, in the limited time he had spent with them, that she and Sansa were two halves of a whole, constantly enriched by the other. He’d seen them on the beach, Sansa reading to Ella out loud from a cooking magazine, Sansa doing needlepoint while Ella read from a book of poems. These girls came out of a different time, a different world, and seemed to enjoy learning nearly as much as they loved one another’s company.

 

“I like that,” Sansa mused, and when Jon glanced over he saw her mouthing the words to herself again, tasting them on her own tongue.

 

Ella made a sound of agreement and went back to reading. He saw her in the rearview, smiling to herself at something else she’d read, tucking her chin in the cashmere sweater she’d dawned in the car. The rain pattered on the windshield and Sansa started tracing designs carelessly on his palm and Jon drove on, wondering the last time he’d felt so content.

 

***

 

It felt like a thousand years since he’d left Ella that morning. He wasn’t sure how long he’d held her last night after she’d fallen asleep in his lap, but he knew that when he tucked her in she’d grabbed hold of him lightly and he’d eased his way in next to her. He hadn’t gotten any sleep, too focused on the delicate flutter of her eyelashes as she dreamed, the breathiness in her voice when she said his name.

 

He’d driven ahead to Memphis but had seen two known associates of Baelishs’ at the hotel they’d made reservations at. Robb had kept on driving, calling the back-up from Texas to move in on them, meanwhile he’d redirected Jon and the girls.

 

He couldn’t help but think that he’d gotten the worse end of the deal. He’d driven the long stretch of highway to New Orleans all alone, while Jon had the two best companions he could think of. He imagined them pulling over to take pictures with the sights the way they’d done in the weeks before they’d met, of stopping for _Tennessee’s Best Pecan Pie_.

 

He’d arrived in New Orleans a few hours ahead of them, and sought to find the appropriate accommodations. Sansa and Ella were fun, but they liked their creature comforts, and the least he could do was make sure they had them. He found a grand old hotel in the historic district that boasted the best waffles and softest towels in the city.

 

He’d surveyed the scene, but as far as he could tell they had lost Baelish for the moment, and instead only had the rest of the city of New Orleans to contend with. Robb had walked to a coffee shop and ordered an espresso and taken out a tattered copy of _Tender is the Night._ He’d read three chapters when he realised he’d been underlining passages he’d like to read to Ella, the way he’d seen her read to Sansa one night.

 

His phone buzzed and he saw a text from Jon saying they’d arrived. It was nearly dusk and Robb rushed back, inconveniently eager to see Ella. However, when he arrived in the hotel lobby he saw Jon and Sansa having a drink at the hotel bar.

 

“The Lone Ranger!,” Sansa said giddily as he stepped forward to kiss her cheek. Her vintage champagne glass was only half full of a cloudy pale yellow drink and her cheeks were rosy.

 

“Dove,” he said with a smile, thoughtlessly using the nickname that Ella always used for her.

 

She gave him a bemused smile but patted the seat next to her, as Jon ordered him a whiskey.

 

It felt like hours, though it had been mere seconds, before he allowed himself to inquire about Ella.

 

“So did you leave a certain blonde in Nashville or…?,” he asked, trying for blasé and failing miserably.

 

“She just went to shower,” Jon assured him, “I took her up to the room myself.”

 

Robb knocked back his whiskey, “I think I might shower myself…”

 

Jon gave him a knowing smirk but only nodded, turning towards Sansa and murmuring something that brought out her melodic giggle.

 

***

 

Ella had been unusually chilled all day, so when Jon and Sansa had suggested a drink in the hotel bar, she’d bowed out, saying she needed to shower. However, when she arrived in the bathroom she’d realised that not only did their suite have a tub big enough for four, but the hotel had its own line of bath tonics. Choosing two that she liked, she filled the tub to an almost uncomfortably warm degree and let the bubbles fill the room with the calming smells of jasmine and honeysuckle.

 

She had undressed, wrapping herself in the sumptuous hotel robe, and was about to get in the tub when she heard a knock on the door. Practicing the caution she knew the boys would want her to, she looked in the peep hole and saw a very distorted Robb Stark.

 

She threw open the door and forced a calm smile on her face, “Funny seeing you here.”

 

He took one look at her in her robe and grinned, “I’m glad I chose this place.”

 

“You did well, I’m about to take a _bubble bath_ ,” she said conspiratorially.

 

He groaned, “That is an image that will make it difficult to sleep tonight.”

 

There was something about making a boy like Robb Stark groan that could make a girl bold. Ella had always suppressed her boldness, being the lady she’d been taught to be, not making a scene, not causing a scandal. But here in her hotel room in New Orleans with the only boy she’d ever loved felt as good a time as any to unleash it.

 

She stepped forward, and just like that the door closed behind him. She looked up into his blue eyes, watching the way his pupils dilated when she came near. They hadn’t so much as kissed yesterday and she felt like her heart was breaking in two from pretending not to love him, from being good and strong and resisting the boy who had hurt her for all the right reasons.

 

“So does that mean you don’t want to keep me company?,” she asked, stepping just the teeniest bit closer and then walking away.

 

She didn’t look back at him until she’d made it to just outside the tub, leaving the door open so there would be a perfect view of her. Then she dropped her robe, glancing just once back over her shoulder and turning back quickly so he wouldn’t see her smile.

 

He made it to the bathroom in one second flat, but she’d already submerged herself in the tub, protecting what was left of her modesty.

 

He started to kick off his shoes but she stopped him with a challenging smile, “I told you that you could keep me company, not that you could _join_ me.”

 

If he hadn’t learned already he would soon learn that Ella Baratheon was no easy target, that she was used to her control and she did not relinquish it willingly. She had no intention of playing this game with him all summer, not when she could still remember what it felt like when their bodies were joined, the feel of his lips consuming hers, his strong hands wandering her body, but she had every intention of playing it a little longer, until he was begging her to stop.

 

He was a gracious loser though, she’d give him that, and he only smiled at her and sat down on the floor next to her tub, as though that had been his plan all along.

 

“So tell me about Memphis,” she said, resting her head against the steep back of the tub and inhaling the comforting scents filling the dimly lit bathroom.

 

It occurred to her as she lay in bed that night that Robb Stark was a worthy opponent, because he told her all about Memphis, and by the time his story was through, all the bubbles had dissolved.

 

***

 

“What if they want to get dinner?,” Sansa asked as Jon swatted his nose at her chin so that she’d have to expose her neck to him.

 

“Then they will eat,” he suggested, pressing kisses to the column of it in the most delightful way.

 

“But…she hasn’t forgiven him yet…,” Sansa supplied, though she grabbed his face and kissed him long and deep, backing all the way into his room of his and Robb’s suite.

 

He chuckled against her, “You mean she hasn’t _admitted_ to forgiving him yet,” he said as he started peeling down the straps of her sundress and pressing kisses to her shoulders.

 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said as Jon unzipped the dress and she lifted off his shirt.

 

He smiled at her as he spun them and sat on the bed, pulling her on top of him.

 

“You, my love, are a wonderful friend…,” he noted, and took her face in his hands, “But a truly terrible liar.”

 

She wasn’t sure if she squealed for what he said or that he picked her up and turned them so he was lying on top of her, but then his hand was wandering down her body and nothing truly mattered after that.


	10. All of the bright, doomed things

 

“Don’t worry, I’ll protect you, I _promise_ ,” she vowed calmly, solemnly.

 

Robb couldn’t keep it together though and broke down.

 

“Shut. _Up_ ,” Jon growled at him and that made even Sansa hold back a laugh.

 

“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” Ella continued, a grin now fully on her face, “It _was_ quite scary…even that five year old had to leave…”

 

They had set out early, eager to sight-see. Jon and Sansa seemed rejuvenated from their _activities_ and Robb was as upbeat as ever. Ella was a little slower to come to life, using her large Oliver People’s sunglasses to cover the circles under her eyes and nursing a special New Orleans style of iced coffee.

 

When it had become clear that Sansa would not be returning to their suite Ella had offered Robb her room. He’d parted with nothing more than a smile and had closed the door behind him. She’d tossed and turned, imagining what it would be like to climb into bed with him, to kiss him the way she was dying to. She’d finally managed sleep sometime around three but refused to be the weak link and miss out on the fun that the city notoriously had to offer.

 

They had been exploring the historic district. Sansa had insisted on a ghost tour as apparently Jon hadn’t told her that was a particular fear of his. It had all been going fine, just fine, until one of the windows shut seemingly on its own accord and Jon had run out like a bat out of hell.

 

“You know I have a gun right?,” Jon said to her, full of bravado now that he was safely in the streets once again.

 

“You know guns can’t hurt ghosts, right?,” Robb pointed out.

 

She couldn’t help but giggle, grabbing Robb’s arm as she doubled over. The look of surprise he gave her was enough to jolt her awake and she released his arm, ignoring the way his face fell when she did.

 

“Alright, alright, that’s enough,” Sansa said, hooking her arm through Jon’s. “You promise me that you’ll protect me from the living, and I’ll protect you from the dead. Deal?”

 

Jon looked at her lovingly, any annoyance gone, and pressed his forehead to hers, “Deal,” he said.

 

They sealed it with a kiss and both she and Robb looked away to give them privacy. They made eye contact and it was she that turned away. The earnestness of his gaze made her insides gooey and she feared the weakness she seemed to feel around him.

 

She made to walk away, heading further down the street when she was stopped suddenly by a hand on her arm. Robb was to her in a moment, and placed a protective arm in front of her, though it was only an old woman who had grabbed her.

 

“Oh my dear,” the woman said, grabbing her hand and turning it over so she could look at the palm. She was a good actress, Ella had to give her credit, because she was looking at her as though she were her granddaughter, as though she truly feared for her.

 

“Palm readings? Cool!,” Sansa said, “How much?”

 

The woman looked at Ella, deep into her eyes in a way that made her uneasy, and she unconsciously moved towards Robb. He moved ever so slightly in front of her and she hid her gaze behind his arm, breaking the spell between her and the psychic.

 

“$20 for you lovely… _if_ your friend will allow me…,” the woman said, peering around Robb to look once more at her.

 

“I’ll pay you $30,” Ella said, “But just her, not me.”

 

Ella was notoriously undaunted, but there was something about this woman that raised the hair on her arms.

 

“It is both or neither, my dear,” the woman said with a sardonic grin.

 

“Oh come on Ella, it’ll be fun!,” Sansa begged, giving her the puppy dog eyes that she was helpless against.

 

“Fine, but we aren’t paying more than $15,” Ella said somewhat grouchily. Sansa took her hand and lead her where the old woman was leading, into a small tent. Ella couldn’t help but turn around and look at Robb, “You’ll-“

 

“I’m not going anywhere, Ella,” Robb said, and all the humor was gone from him and Jon now as they surveyed the scene. Robb nodded at her and she nodded back, before her view was obstructed by the various silks hanging from the ceiling. Sansa was already seated and Ella sat next to her, “You first Dovey,” she said brightly, hiding her reticence.

 

The old woman lit various candles and incense, and opened a box that was stashed with bills. Sansa procured $15 from her bag and placed it in, then rested her arm on the table, palm facing upwards.

 

“Let me see my lovely, what goodness might be in store for you,” the old woman said with a false smile. Ella could tell the woman wasn’t really looking and instead said, “Ahh your love line is particularly pronounced… I see a great love in your future…perhaps with a …. handsome man…he is not…gregarious….”

 

“Oh that’s _Jon_!,” Sansa said, giving the game away. “He is so broody.”

 

“Oh yes, this Jon…I see that…this love will change you…challenge you…I see…a betrayal….,” the woman said, trailing off as though trying to see better.

 

“He _did_ betray me! Do you think we can get past it?,” Sansa asked.

 

Ella fought the urge to smile. For one thing, Sansa was terrible at this, and for another, it didn’t seem like there was too much holding her and Jon back.

 

“Oh yes, lovely girl, for you I see only good things,” the woman said.

 

“Thank you, Maggy!,” Sansa said, “Ella it’s your turn…”

 

The old woman fixed her greedy eyes on her and took her hand. Her hands were old and weathered but they held hers as though it were made of glass.

 

“Lovely girl, will you give me a moment with your friend?,” the old woman asked.

 

“Have fun!,” Sansa said with a smile, bounding out, most likely to go tell Jon what a wonderful future they were going to have together.

 

They both watched her go and when Ella turned back, Maggy was poring over her hand.

 

“Well, my dear…”

 

***

 

Sansa was in a gorgeous mood when she came out of the psychic’s, and it was in stark contrast to Robb’s, who paced like a caged wolf.

 

“And then she said that she saw _only the good things_ in my future,” Sansa said as she looped her arms around his neck.

 

Jon couldn’t resist her when she was like this. He couldn’t really resist her ever, but she was so excited and affectionate and he felt his arms loop around her waist without even thinking about it.

 

“As you deserve,” he said to her in a tone he hadn’t known he was capable of only a week ago.

 

She beamed at him, pressing a kiss to his lips.

 

“What are they doing in there?,” Robb asked, turning around towards them.

 

“Maggy just wanted a moment alone with her…probably trying to turn her into a believer, Ella is a notorious skeptic…,” Sansa explained.

 

Jon met Robb’s eyes and tried to tell him wordlessly to calm down. Ella was small, but she was scrappy, and could probably take on a man twice her size out of sheer force of will. He wasn’t terribly worried about her with an old lady.

 

“Are you guys hungry? I’m starved,” Sansa said.

 

“Yeah…yeah Dovey,” he said. He and Robb had unintentionally slipped into using Ella’s nickname for her, “Why don’t you and Robb go find us a place and I’ll wait for Ella.”

 

“No it’s-,” Robb started.

 

“Oh come on Stark,” Sansa said, looping her arm through his, “Jon here will take good care of our girl, and I _saw_ you eyeing that little bistro across the street.”

 

Robb was helpless against her and allowed himself to be dragged off while Jon stood guard, waiting for Ella. The truth was, he wanted to talk to her anyway, see how she was doing with it all. From what Robb had told him, she was courteous, sweet, flirtatious, but guarded. He thought Robb might go insane if it went on any longer, and in truth, he was worried about Ella. He had an idea of why she was so hesitant to go there again with Robb, and it wasn’t because of a lie.

 

She came out a moment later, and her face was white.

 

“Ella?,” he asked stepping forward and holding her by her waist, afraid she might tip over.

 

“Where is she?,” she asked, grasping onto him with more strength than he knew she had. “Jon where is Sansa?”

 

Fear struck him at the tone of her voice, “She’s with Robb, they just went to go grab a table for lunch. What’s going on Ella? What…what happened?”

 

“She…she isn’t safe Jon…,” Ella said. This wasn’t news. They knew that Baelish was looking for Sansa, hadn’t gone to Memphis for fear of being outnumbered. But there was something to Ella’s stare, something that told him there was more to it, something they didn’t know, something she didn’t understand.

 

“Ella, we are going to keep her safe, I promise,” he said, “We are going to keep you both safe.”

 

The way she looked at him now chilled him to his core. It was a look of defeat, of pity too.

 

“You can’t,” she said hollowly, “No matter what… one of us is doomed. You have to choose her. You have to make Robb choose her.”

 

_So I was right then._

 

“Ella…she is some con artist… don’t let her fool you,” he said, “Don’t let her stop what you could have with Robb. I know that’s why you’ve been holding back from him. You think that just because you won’t sleep with him he is going to love you less. That there is anything that you could ever do to make him not choose you? You’re smarter than that, Ella… and in the meantime…it’s killing both of you.”

 

Ella looked at him as though she might say something else but she only looked at him for another moment, then a bright smile returned to her face.

 

“You’re right…let’s go have some lunch, I’m _starving_ ,” she said and tugged him, a bounce back in her step.

 

They met Sansa and Robb at an outdoor cafe, where they had sat across from one another under a large umbrella.

 

“So, what did she want to tell you?,” Sansa asked eagerly.

 

“Yes, what secrets did this palm hold?,” Robb asked, boldly picking it up and turning it upwards. He traced it with his finger and remarked, “Huh…you’re lifeline is broken.

 

“I know,” she said to him, but she looked at Jon.

 

He felt the blood in his veins turn to ice, fought the urge to slam his fist down on the table.

 

_So you think the gods mean to take you early, is that it? I’d like to see them try._

 

***

 

Somewhere after the second bar, Robb Stark started to like New Orleans.

 

The overall energy of the city was nearly manic, and there were plenty of bachelorette parties downing tequila shots along the main strip, but they’d found their way into some local bars. The first was a jazz club, where men experimented as straightforward drinks were drunk, whiskey neat, a gin martini. The second was a speakeasy type, where Ella and Sansa had befriended the bartender and had gotten the recommendation for the third bar, where they were now.

 

It was a bar where people danced, but it resisted crossing the line into a club. It was an interesting mix of people, in the booths sat groups with half the people wearing leather and the other wearing diamonds.

 

They all fit in in their own way. Jon wore his usual black, he wore dark jeans and a white v neck t shirt, Sansa had on a black dress that had made Jon’s eyes bug out of his head when he saw it, and Ella wore white pants and a silvery knit top with a high neck and plunging back.

 

They had a booth and had been sipping their drinks and taking in the scene. The whiskey was loosening his tongue and he was having a hard time keeping his hands off of Ella, who seemed to be pulsing with an almost vicious desire to have fun. She had been the one leading them to each place, noting the exact right time to leave each bar, curating it all to her exact specifications.

 

“I need a drink,” she whispered in his ear, a tendril of her hair tickling his neck.

 

“I’ll go grab you another martini,” he said.

 

“I’ll come with you,” she volunteered, and he figured she wanted to give Jon and Sansa space. Their friends had been moving closer and closer all night and he was pretty sure one of Sansa’s legs was on top of Jon’s at this point.

 

It was her who grabbed his hand this time and he looked down at their clasped hands and smiled, meeting her eyes. She gave him an electric smile and he nearly stumbled as he went to lead her to the bar.

 

When they got there he ordered her martini and his whiskey and made room for them placing his hand on the counter to give her room and to make sure no one could get close to her. She settled in, standing a little closer than even the crowded bar required. Not that he was complaining, as far as he was concerned, she couldn’t get close enough.

 

“So is this what you’re like on a date too, or is it just because of the other thing?,” she asked him curiously, gesturing to his protective stance.

 

“If you let me take you on a date, even _if_ I ignored the _other thing,_ then yes…this is how I would be,” he said, then grinned, because that wasn’t the whole story, “Well, actually, I’d be like this…,” he said and keeping his one arm resting on the counter, placed his other hand on the small of her back and pulled her even closer.

 

He saw her gasp and the light was catching in her jade eyes. Her body felt so good against his, and he couldn’t help but remember their night together, when he learned everything he could about the how’s and why’s of it.

 

There was something to the way she was looking at him, something he didn’t quite understand.

 

Before he could wonder what it was though, she leaned forward, and kissed him. He thought his brain would explode from the dizzying pleasure of feeling her lips against his once again. She was already pressed flush against him, but he increased the pressure of his hand on her back, and the other found her silky hair. She was a glorious kisser, and resting her hands on his shoulders arched into him, standing on her tiptoes, giving him all of her weight, which admittedly wasn’t much. He wanted to consume her, body and soul, and by god if he didn’t love her.

 

“El I thought… I thought you didn’t…,” he started when they broke apart, both catching their breath.

 

“Don’t think,” she said, shaking her head. The look in her eyes frightened him more than he could say, but it was Ella. He was a fool for her, he would give her anything, be anything that she needed, if only she would keep leaning into him like that, like she _knew_ he wouldn’t let her fall. Her hands were still on his shoulders but they moved now to take his face in between them, and she ordered, “Just kiss me until nothing matters.”

 

***

 

“K quick tell me, yes or no,” she said with a giggle, her arm wrapped around Ella’s shoulders, Ella’s arm wrapped around her waist.

 

“Dovey!,” Ella chided, but broke into a giggle anyway.

 

“It’s now or never Ellabelle…,” she said, “Am I sleeping in our suite tonight?”

 

Their heads were pressed against once another so Sansa felt her shake hers and grinned to herself. Ella had been denying herself, denying Robb for days, when it was clear to everyone who saw them that they were head over heels for one another.

 

They’d made their way back to the hotel after an evening of dancing too close and drinking too much. They’d giggled the whole elevator ride up, even Jon and Robb, and Sansa had grabbed Ella, wanting to make sure she was looking after her friend.

 

They stopped in front of the boys suite.

 

“Sorry Robb…,” Sansa said with a smug smile, “I think I’m going to have to kick you out of your room again.”

 

Robb smiled a surprised, overjoyed smile while Ella shot daggers at her and Jon looked at Ella in concern.

 

“You’re a troublemaker Dovey,” Ella said, then turned to Jon and said, “Keep an eye on this one, Snow,” she said and kissed his cheek.

 

“Couldn’t stop even if I wanted to,” he said and Sansa’s insides turned gooey.

 

Ella turned to continue down the hall, Robb following her though turning around to give a praising gesture to Sansa.

 

When the door to the boys suite closed behind her and Jon, she found herself pressed up against it.

 

“So you’re a troublemaker, is that right Sansa?,” Jon said, grabbing hold of her neck gently and tilting her head back so he could kiss the length of it.

 

“I’m afraid so,” she said with a smile as he took one of her hands in his and held it above her.

 

“Then you’ll have to be punished,” he warned, as he pulled down the straps of her dress and pressed kisses to her shoulders, her clavicle, her cleavage.

 

“I’ll misbehave every day if this is my consequence,” she sighed.

 

She felt his grin when he kissed her and was not surprised that it fit perfectly against her own.


	11. Beach Blanket Babylon

The air had turned heavy on the coast and the sky seemed low enough to touch. They drove through sleepy towns and farmlands, villages where you could buy nothing but guns and gasoline.

 

“It’s hard to believe this is the same country as New England,” Ella said almost to herself as she reached her hand out the window, feeling the warm breeze tickling her skin.

 

The porch of the yacht club felt very far away, and her ski house in Vermont even further.

 

“When did you wake up?,” Robb asked her from the driver’s seat. She turned to him, her cheek resting on her arm and smiled. “I missed you.”

 

She felt that happiness all the way down in her toes. She was so happy it was exhausting and she felt the delicious ache in her bones that came from too much comfort.

 

“The salt air woke me,” she said lazily. She had always been a bit of a beach baby, her happiest hours were spent with a book and a beach chair on cloudy Massachusetts days.

 

He gave her a smile, “Only an hour until Galveston. You’ll have those toes of yours in the sand in no time.”

 

She leaned over and kissed his cheek. Then turned around and waved to Sansa who was sitting in the passenger seat of the Range Rover just behind them. Sansa blew her a kiss and then threw her head back and giggled when Jon did too.

 

“She’s happy,” Ella said, leaning her chin on Robb’s shoulder, her forehead against the hollow of his cheek.

 

“And how about you?,” he asked her, picking up one of her hands and running her knuckles over his lips.

 

She smiled against his jaw.

 

“Very happy,” she whispered.

 

His answering grin was all she needed to see and she leaned her head against his shoulder.

 

The top was down and the sun beamed down on them. She was being driven by the boy she loved and the whole summer stretched out in front of them, just like the open highway.

 

***

 

With the exception of a few incidents, and of course, the ever present threat of Baelish, being Ella and Sansa’s bodyguard was _usually_ pretty easy.

 

For one thing, now that the girls knew about him and Robb, they didn’t have to trail them, always carefully at a safe distance. For another, the girls were having an innocent summer road trip and weren’t exactly club girls.

 

This is all forgetting the perks of being Sansa’s _boyfriend_ and getting to hang out with Ella all the time, who was quickly becoming one of his favorite people in the world.

 

However, today was an exception. A huge exception. Because today was a a beach day.

 

If Jon ever talked to the other guys about their gigs, he knows they would tear him apart. _Dude, it’s literally a day at the beach_ they’d say. But they wouldn’t know what Jon knew. That there was nothing easy about watching out for Sansa and Ella in bathing suits.

 

Even though Robb and Jon had placed their beach chairs on either side of the girls, it hadn’t stopped some frat star from chatting up Ella when his volleyball had landed near her foot. (In reality it had been closer to Robb’s foot, which Robb had promptly pointed out with a growl that made Ella bite the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing). It hadn’t stopped them from being approached when they went for a swim, or when they went to pick seaglass for Sansa’s mother. It hadn’t stopped that guy at the snack shop from giving Sansa a free lemonade when she’d realised she’d forgotten her money _all the way back at her chair._

 

To put it mildly, Jon Snow had never felt so fucking useless in his life. He, who considered himself quite intimidating, was nothing compared to Sansa’s light pink bikini, and Robb, who had taken to following Ella around like she was his little duckling, did nothing to stop guys from looking at her in her periwinkle one-piece with its low back.

 

“I’m going to go for a little walk by the water,” Ella said, plopping her nearly finished copy of House of Mirth on the towel next to her.

 

“Don’t you want your sweater?,” Robb asked her.

 

“It’s 100 degrees,” she said with an amused smirk, her hands on her hips like she knew exactly what he was thinking. Even Jon, who only had eyes for Sansa, had to admit that she was pretty irresistible, with her tousled golden hair and tanned limbs.

 

“D…….on’t you want company?,” Robb finished finally after they’d all turned to look at him.

 

“Thank god he found it,” Sansa whispered under her breath and Jon choked back a laugh.

 

“Always,” Ella said graciously though, holding out her hand. When Robb took hers she stood on her tiptoes and gave him a kiss, as though finally taking pity on him and letting all the men on the beach know that she was very taken, thank you very much.

 

Sansa moved under the umbrella, her fair skin meant she had to be much more careful than the rest of them, and he already saw that her nose had turned adorably pink despite the hat that she’d worn for most of the day.

 

“Can we just eat at the pier tonight? There is supposed to be a place for great fish tacos that we can walk to from the house,” she asked him.

 

They’d forgone hotels for the little town. Instead, they’d decided to spend a little under a week here, soaking up the sun and had rented a perfect little house, with two bedrooms, a chefs kitchen, and a pool and a terrace for cocktail hour.

 

“That sounds perfect,” he said and she smiled, taking his hand in hers and pressing a kiss to the back of it.

 

So really, he supposed he couldn’t complain, even if being a bodyguard for the two most beautiful girls he’d ever known could prove occasionally challenging.

 

He closed his eyes, his hand still in hers and would have fallen asleep, if he didn’t feel a dark shadow blocking out the sun.

 

Sansa’s hand tensed in his and his eyes shot open.

 

“I know someone who is looking for you,” a bald man said to Sansa ominously.

 

***

 

If Robb had seen himself this time last year, he would have called himself a fool.

 

Here he was, in love with his _assignment_. Not just your every day kind of summer romance love either. Head over heels in love with Ella Baratheon.

 

The _assignment_ in question was very ineffectively trying to sneak up on him to jump on his back. He feigned surprise anyway, as though years of training had nothing on her. Which he supposed in a way, was true.

 

He hooked his arms under her legs and spun wildly, landing them in the water until her feet were creating a whirlpool around them and he heard her irresistible shrieks of laughter.

He couldn’t remember when he’d ever been so playful. Probably the last time he was with his little brother Rickon, he supposed, but Ella pulled it from him constantly. Even with the overbearing weight of needing to protect her on his mind constantly, he still felt like a little kid around her, constantly thinking things up to pull that divine giggle from her lips.

 

“Oh no, I’m going down,” he said, purposefully starting to wobble.

 

“Robb Stark don’t you da-,” she squealed but they had already plunged under water. He felt her squeeze him, her arms and legs still wrapped around him and he pulled them back up.

 

“God damn that felt good,” he said. _Speaking of things that feel good_ , he though as she slid down his body.

 

“And what if I was the kind of girl who worried about how her hair looked, or her make-up?,” Ella asked him prissily.

 

He turned towards her. The sun had brought out the freckles along the bridge of her nose, and the pinkness of her cheeks made her eyes look particularly green.

 

“You don’t wear make-up,” he pointed out, “And your hair looks…,” he started, but he really _had_ messed it up. She knew this clearly and started to pose, teasing her golden locks. She was being silly, but the pouty faces she was making were making him yearn for her and he pulled her face to his and smacked a cold kiss on her lips.

 

“Amazing?,” she asked when they pulled apart, “Gorgeous? Fan _tastic_?,” supplying more adjectives.

 

“All of the above,” he said as they walked back to the shore, his arm resting on her shoulders.

 

It took them a moment to find their spot, because two of the chairs were missing.

 

Ella started to pack-up, knowing something was amiss when Robb looked at his phone.

 

“El we gotta go,” he said, picking up their chairs and moving back into his defensive position, his body set to cover hers from any angle. The text Jon had sent chilled him to his core.

 

_Meet us at the house. Turn your cell phones off._

 

***

 

Sansa sat on the back terrace of the little house that only that morning had felt like the ultimate dream home, the one her and Ella had always talked about. A little beach house where their children could grow up side by side.

 

She sat on the terrace, next to Jon, with Lorde wafting from the speakers as though they were having a party.

 

Their guest had told them little about himself. Jon had asked that he wait until Robb arrived. Apparently they preferred to hear information together for the first time, that way neither could be dissuaded by their loyalty to the other, from the embellishments or the prejudices they may supply.

 

All they had been told was that he knew Petyr Baelish and that he could help them. He’d then told them to turn off their cell phones and after Jon had texted Robb they did.

 

They heard the front door slam, “Dovey? Dovey where are you?!” Ella called.

 

“We’re out here, Ella, it’s lovely out here!,” Sansa cried with a falseness in her tone and Ella heard it, sprinting outside.

 

Robb only just cut her off and planted himself in front of her, giving her a stern look before looking out on the terrace. When he saw it was only Jon and Sansa he opened the door for her. Ella walked outside with her head held high despite Robb scowling at her.

 

“You promised,” Robb said.

 

Ella rolled her eyes and came to sit next to Sansa. Sansa felt home the moment she was in Ella’s arms and held to her tightly. She smelled like suntan lotion and sunshine and jasmine and _Ella,_ and they settled back against the seat wrapped around one another.

 

“What’s this about?,” Robb asked as he took a seat in the chair closest to Ella. Even annoyed with her, he seemingly couldn’t be parted from her.

 

“Robb, Ella, meet Varys…,” Jon said, and the strange quiet man came back into view, taking the seat opposite the couch.

 

“Ah Myrcella Baratheon,” the man said in his odd voice, the same he’d used to address her, “It _is_ an honor. I knew your father and your grandfather, and have heard rumors of a beauty that rivals your mothers.”

 

Sansa now held Ella's hand as her friend straightened up. They both seemed to be attempting to move in front of the other, which was ridiculous given that it was obvious Varys did not hold any sort of weapons, and that the doughy older man would be no match for Jon and Robb even if he did. 

 

"I'm delighted to make your aquaintance...?," Ella said politely, waiting for him to offer his name. 

 

"My name is Varys, my dear, an admirer of your family for some time, and Miss Sansa's," he then turned and looked at Jon and Robb, "In fact...I have been an admirer of all your families for some years now."

 

The four of them shared a look, for the first time Robb and Jon looked as confused as she and Ella. 

 

" _Our_  families?," Jon asked with obvious confusion. He had been orphaned at only 8 years old.

 

"Yes, my dear boy...had you thought it was merely random chance that they paired you up with these two beauties?," Varys replied.

 

They all shifted uncomfortably, because very obviously that _is_ what Jon and Robb thought. Sansa surveyed them both, trying to see if there was any indication that they had not been fully honest with them, but found no signs of duplicity. 

 

"Oh my, they've told you nothing have they?," Varys lamented. "Such a pity..."


	12. Know the water's sweet but blood is thicker

 

Ella had never quite understood the concept of a deafening silence until Varys left the four of them on the terrace. What no one ever tells you is that it isn't the silence that does it, it is the ringing in your ears, the way your mind slows, the vibration you feel in your fingertips. It is shock, pure and simple.

 

If anyone had wanted to perform a study, and at this point, Ella wouldn't be surprised if someone already had, then the posture of each of them would have held great insights into their characters and relationships. Sansa sat, making her long body as small as possible, with her knees tucked up and her cheek resting on them. Jon sat with one arm resting on the back of the couch behind her, his body curling protectively around her, his eyes staring unseeing at the ground. She sat stoically pressed to Robb's side. He held her hands in his tightly, as though she might leave him otherwise, and kept them raised to his lips, and while he too curled into himself, his elbows resting on his knees, it was Sansa he looked at. 

 

“Sansa -,” Jon started, before either she or Robb could shoot him warning looks, though they both tried.

 

Predictably, in the same moment, Sansa sprung off the couch, disappearing through the screen doors. They all rose when they heard the front door bang shut.

 

“No,” Ella said, stepping in front of the boys to block them from following.

 

“Ella you two can’t go off on your own,” Robb protested.

 

“What if Baelish shows up?,” Jon demanded.

 

She had been turning to follow Sansa, ignoring the protestations that she knew would come. At the sound of his name though, the sound of _that_ name, she whirled around with fire in her eyes.

 

“Oh I _hope_ that he does,” she snarled out, “I _truly_ hope he does. Turn your phones back on. I’ll call if I need you but the longer we stand here discussing it the further she is getting.”

 

She didn’t pause to see if they followed her instructions, she ran through the house and out the front door. She went in the direction of the beach, knowing intrinsically that that is where Sansa had gone. They were New Englanders, salt water was in their blood.

 

She raced as quickly as she could in her flip-flops until she saw her, sitting on a bench near the snack shack, a lemonade in hand, looking down as her feet dug holes in the sand.

 

“Who do you have to pork around here to get a free lemonade?,” she opened elegantly.

 

“Pork?,” Sansa said, still looking down, but she could hear a near smile on her face, “Really?”

 

“Anything to earn those dimples, Dovey,” Ella said as she sat down next to her, pressing her arm against Sansa’s.

 

“Where should we start?,” Sansa said with a sigh.

 

“As always, we start with the absolutes,” Ella answered.

 

“You and me?,” Sansa asked with a small smile, though there were tears in her blue eyes.

 

“You and me,” Ella confirmed, taking Sansa’s hand in hers.

 

It could have been mere moments or hours that they sat there, but wordlessly they rose and walked back towards the little house, that only hours ago had seemed like their dream come to life. There were two boys and too many truths waiting for them, but as they held one another they each felt stronger, confident in the only absolute either of them had ever needed.

 

They entered the house to find Jon and Robb waiting on the terrace in exactly the place she’d left them. She saw them each clench their fists as though holding themselves back, something in the way she and Sansa were holding one another must have halted them.

 

“So…,” Jon started and she saw him internally cringe.

 

“I think it’s time I speak with my brother,” Sansa stated calmly, though she squeezed Ella’s hand.

 

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know, little one,” Robb returned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a little teaser chapter to get me back into it...I've been so blocked mentally lately. Hope you enjoy, I've been waiting to get to this point for a while. :)


	13. Two truths and a lie

It would take the four of them months to unpack everything that Varys had told them in the space of a single afternoon. Even longer to understand the true ramifications of it.

 

For now, the crux of what they knew, of what they understood, is that they had all been lied to by the people they had trusted most, and that the ties between them were irrevocable and unyielding.

 

Jon and Ella stood in the kitchen trying not to listen into the conversation between Sansa and Robb. After all this time, they deserved at least privacy in their attempt to come to terms with what they all knew. That Sansa and Robb were siblings. That in Sansa’s infancy there had been a threat made. And Cat had panicked. And left.

 

Ned had remarried quickly and had other Starks in his image. The woman he married too had red hair, so little three year old Robb had forgotten over time the true face of his mother, and had instead been raised by her proxy, her replacement. Sansa had travelled east with her mother, who had changed their names. She had been raised on the story of her father meeting his end in a tragic accident when she was two, and her heartbroken mother who could never remarry. The latter of which, appeared to be true.

 

Jon, for his part, descended from two _noble_ houses as Varys put it, and though the concept of nobility was decidedly un-American, it was apparently intrinsic to the story. The story of all their families, and the sins that bound them.

 

Ella, it appeared had been born of a union meant to heal the wounds of the past. The fact that the union had healed nothing and merely sowed more discourse was not a consequence any had intended. If Varys had doubts about her true parentage he would not reveal them, even when Ella’s green gaze had demanded it.

 

The fact that Jon had been assigned to Ella was not a mistake at all. Jon was always meant to be enticed and get too close. He had simply ruined it by being enticed by the wrong girl.

 

“It isn’t just Baelish now,” Ella surmised, her light green eyes searching his, “Is it?”

 

Jon was about to answer her, but the screen door slammed and it was Robb who voiced his own thoughts, “No. It’s the whole damn lot of them.”

 

***

 

“It can’t be true,” Sansa said shaking her head.

 

She was past denying what they all knew, that she was his sister, but everything else - that was a different matter.

 

“I’m with Sansa it’s too… _illuminati…_ ,” Jon said shaking his head. He was the skeptic, always had been.

 

In any other occasion, Jon saying the word _illuminati_ would have had Sansa and Ella in hysterics, but he was right. What Varys had told him, families dating back to Plymouth Rock, the fates of nations determined by strings being pulled in the dark, an order founded in the old country, born again in the New World.

 

He looked at Ella. She was a marvel, the most contained of all of them. It was almost like she was disappointed though. She’d asked Varys about her parentage and he’d looked at her blankly. All the three of them wanted was to hear that their parents hadn’t lied to them, but Ella, it was almost like she’d been waiting for the conversation her whole life.

 

She stood there while Sansa and Jon discussed it amongst themselves, and Robb just watched her. He had lost hours watching her - the way it looked when she didn’t like how a dream was going as she lay in bed, the special smile she reserved for very old dogs, the way she looked at him.

 

“There was a man when I was younger,” she said finally, and Jon and Sansa stopped talking and waited. “He, well my grandfather called him an associate, but I knew better… My grandfather… is not a nice man. It would be polite to call him respected, but more truthful to call him feared,” she paused and looked up at him. He nodded once and she breathed out, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. “He could make things happen, like the pieces on a chessboard. He had pawns, and rooks. His man saw me once. I had just gotten out of the pool at Casterly Rock, and I went into the pool house -“

 

“You never go into the pool house,” Sansa cut in.

 

The look the girls shared scared him more than almost anything else he’d seen and he fought crossing to Ella - she who was always so strong was making herself smaller. She turned towards him, as though she sensed it and shook her head.

 

“Nothing happened - not like that. But they were talking about someone, a senator. He was spearheading the… something with water…,” she trailed off, clearly annoyed with herself that she didn’t remember, even though she couldn’t have been more than eleven.

 

“Senator Glover? The Clean Water Act? It was struck down after his accident…,” Jon supplied.

 

Ella’s gaze met his.

 

“It wasn’t an accident,” Robb finished.

 

“My grandfather ventured into off-shore drilling the year before… the Clean Water Act would have placed restrictions on his business,” Ella said.

 

“Who was it that took Glover’s seat?,” Jon asked with a furrowed brow.

 

“Senator Frey,” Sansa answered, “Anti-regulation, anti-big government.”

 

“He was my grandfather’s best man,” Ella said with a haunted smile, “He gave me my horse, Sadie.”

 

“El - that could be -,” Jon started but Ella cut him off.

 

“Could be what Jon? What do they call a thing like that in your profession?,” she rounded on him, “We all know what happened. A part of me has _always_ known.”

 

“But how are we all connected? I mean, my _mother_ was in this,” Sansa started then cast a nervous look at Robb, “Our, our mother was in this. She didn’t marry into it, her family was in it…and yet…your family, your mother she…acted like she didn’t even know her. Even after years of us being friends… I always thought she was just…”

 

“A bitch?,” Ella shrugged. “She’s that too.”

 

“So what do we do now?,” Sansa asked them all.

 

He looked at her, his sister, at Jon, his brother, at Ella, who he was pretty sure was the love of his life.

 

“Now we fight. We fight Baelish and Ella’s grandfather’s goons and any members of the Order of the Wheel or whatever it is the call themselves. From now on, we take care of our own, the people in this room,” he said finally.

 

They all nodded but it was Sansa who said softly, as though to herself.

 

“I wonder if this how they felt when they founded it. I wonder if they felt like they didn’t have a choice.”

 

***

 

In her entire life, Ella had never known a day to feel quite so long. It seemed like weeks had passed since she’d fallen asleep as Robb drove, since she’d stuck her toes in the gulf.

 

Robb was sitting on their bed when she came out of the bathroom. She’d taken a long shower, a bit of creature comforts always did wonders for her, and padded out in white silk pajama shorts and a matching camisole, her towel wrapped around her head like a turban.

 

She thought of all the different things she could say to pull him out of his thoughts. All the stupid jokes that would force that half-smile that always seemed to lead to a full smile around her. But then she thought about what he’d said in the kitchen, how he’d been acting since Varys left, and all of those stupid jokes seemed exactly that, stupid.

 

She crossed over to him and put her hands on his shoulders. His large hands came around her almost instantly, pulling her closer to him as he pressed his head against her stomach. She wove her hands into his hair, stroking him in what she hoped was a soothing manner.

 

It only took a moment before the sobs came, and his arms wrapped around her more fully, holding onto her like she was a life raft.

 

There was nothing to say, so she just held him. He pulled her into his lap and buried his face against her and she felt her own tears come to her eyes. They had all lost so much in the span of a day, and all they had now was one another.

 

They both seemed to realise this at the same time and their mouths met in a frenzy. Her pajamas were gone within seconds and he was pulling her back on him. They cried out when he entered her and all the pain and sadness and fear surrounded them as they lost themselves in one another for a little while.


	14. Love is a Poison

 

“Come on!,” Ella called as she sprinted down the beach like a bat out of hell.

 

“Damn it, El, wait up!,” Jon called, chasing after her.

 

She was a quick little thing, faster than him, but his stride was longer and he caught up to her.

 

Her cheeks were flushed pink and there was perspiration on her brow, but her breath was steady, the long sinewy muscles of her legs carrying her quickly and steadily down the beach.

 

He was in good shape, his work demanded it and he’d always played sports, but working out with her made him feel like an old man. She had boundless energy and a disciplined body and he liked how much she pushed him, how hard he had to try to keep up with her.

 

_She can get away if she needs to. They can’t hurt her if they can’t catch her._

 

It was that thought that spurred him on, knowing her competitiveness would urge her forward as well. She let out a little yelp as she started running faster and he chuckled. They were neck and neck as they neared the entrance to the beach that would take them down the little path to their house.

 

“Come on, little one,” he urged her on, “No one’s gonna get you, are they?”

 

Predictably, if not unbelievably, she started running faster.

 

“That’s my girl,” he said encouragingly, though it was coming out in spurts he was so exhausted, “They won’t know what hit them, will they? They think they can come for Ella Baratheon, _I DON’T THINK SO._ ”

 

“Idiots,” she spat out, clearly giving into his pump up speech.

 

“Fools,” he spat back, angry at Baelish, at their families, at his bosses, at the world. At everyone that wasn’t currently residing at 12 Seaglass Lane.

 

“Dumb motherfuckers,” she said and that snapped him out of his anger.

 

He turned to her and she seemed to realise how ridiculous that had sounded as well and started to laugh. He started laughing too, the endorphins and her company always brought him out of his thoughts and he knew there was no way they’d make it to the end of the beach.

 

He tugged her arm gently and they slowed, collapsing back onto the sand. Ella was still giggling, the deep belly chuckle that she’d told them had come from her father. It seemed so out of place coming out of her tiny frame that it was impossible not to laugh along.

 

She finally caught her breath, and turned on her back to look up at the early morning sky. It was cloudy and had a bluish gray tinge to it that confirmed the weather report’s prediction of rain.

 

They’d had beautiful weather all week, and given everything had decided to extend their stay for another couple of weeks. None of them were eager for hotels or bellhops, preferring instead homemade pizza on the terrace and card tournaments that lasted for nights. They were due for some rain, and Sansa at least would be relieved to be out of the sun for a day.

 

“It’s not me they are coming for, Jon,” she said, “Not yet anyway.”

 

He thought of Sansa. His perfect Sansa with her pink nose and loving blue eyes. Sansa who had stayed up all night writing down stories about her mother to share with Robb. Sansa who sat on the couch with Ella’s head in her lap, stroking her best friend’s hair as the pair of them watched Casablanca, crying for Ingrid Bergman and themselves. Sansa who even in her pain found different ways of showing him how much she loved him.

 

“That’s not true actually,” Ella continued, “If they are coming for _her_ they are coming for me. Nobody is getting their hands on _her_ , not our girl. And I will gut any dumb motherfucker that tries.”

 

They had been doing research. Jon had been looking into her family while she had been looking into his. So he had learned a little about her grandfather, and he saw a bit him in her now. She was not one who courted violence or power, but she was someone that would not be daunted by a fight. Not when her best friend’s safety was on the line.

 

“Tomorrow we add self-defence training to our workout,” he said, because he knew there would be no keeping her out of it. She, the sweetest girl he knew, would fight to the death, _her own_ , for Sansa. She turned to look at him and he said, “You can’t protect Sansa if you can’t protect yourself. Robb and I are going to do our best to keep you both safe, but if something happens to us - I won’t leave you without defences.”

 

“Nothing is happening to either of you, any of you,” she said. He started to protest but she sad up and looked down at him. “I know this started as a job for you guys. It was your _job_ to protect us, but that’s not true anymore,” he sat up, ready to tell her that she was wrong, but she was more clever than him by half and said, “It’s beyond that now. You are going to protect us because you love us and we are going to protect you because we love you. We are a family now, we’re all that we have, we’re all that there is. And don’t think for one second that I’m anymore comfortable losing you than I am losing her. Nothing is happening to any of you.”

 

“It’d be a fool that bet against Ella Baratheon,” he said standing up. He offered her his hand and pulled her up, “And despite common belief, I’m no fool.”

 

“Come on,” she said with an impish grin, the fire in her eyes from a moment gone, leaving them once again the color of a cool English river, “They’re making breakfast. Last one back has to eat what Robb cooked!”

 

With that she took off into a sprint, determined not to eat another one of Robb’s terrifying attempts at pancakes.

 

***

 

“I just don’t understand how this could happen,” he said, looking down at the massacre in front of him.

 

Sansa peered over his shoulder, standing on her tip toes, “You didn’t grease the pan.”

 

He had been trying to make a _frittata_. He had been told that despite the name, it was not as fancy or difficult as it sounded, and he had been assured that Ella adored them. Sansa had carefully laid out the instructions, giving him tips, and he had relied so heavily on them that he hadn’t actually read the instructions, which now that he did, very clearly stated to grease the pan.

 

“Gosh darn it!,” he exclaimed.

 

“Calm down, Grandpa,” Sansa teased with a giggle, pulling out a tray of enormous blueberry muffins from the oven.

 

He smiled at the sound of her laugh. Despite everything, it had been his constant companion this last week, and it was now one of the most precious sounds in his world. The sound of his little sister, safe and happy.

 

He had taken a psychology class this past year at Dartmouth, that focused all on the debate between nature vs nurture. He had always been on the side of nurture, his father having had such a formative role in who he was and how he conducted himself, how he viewed the world, but after spending the early part of the summer with Sansa that all went out the window.

 

He had felt a connection to her since before they’d found out the truth of their parentage. Had felt a need to protect her, of course, but had also felt oddly drawn to her. It had never been anything short of _brotherly_ , and so in a way, him finding out that she was his little sister was the least surprising thing they’d learned. It had almost been a relief, _so that’s why_. No, it had been a relief. There was nothing about Sansa that was anything short of miraculous. They hadn’t been raised together, but there was something instinctual about their sibling bond that had made itself known far before the truth.

 

They had been getting to know one another, really getting to know one another, since being at the beach. They’d obviously bonded beforehand but their focuses had been Jon and Ella, now though, they spent long hours together. She had been telling him stories of their mom, Ella sitting silently at his side until one would come up that she’d been there for and then she’d add in little tidbits. Apparently they were quite close, often spending afternoons together when Ella was in want or need of a mother figure.

 

 _I bet she loves you like I do_ , he thought. He was angry at everyone, but he couldn’t find it in him to be angry with his mother. She had made a mistake, a snap judgment, but she had done so to protect Sansa. He had grown up without her, but it had been in Sansa’s service. Had he been consulted, nothing would have changed because he would have done whatever was necessary to protect his little sister.

 

He had been trying to share things as well. She hadn’t asked much about their father, but was curious about her other brothers, Bran and Rickon.

 

“Actually…it’s um…,” he broached, “One of Dad’s sayings…he doesn’t like to swear in front of Rickon…”

 

“Oh,” Sansa nodded.

 

He regretted saying anything. He was still learning her tells, what she wanted to know, what she didn’t. He knew that she knew that he was angry at their father, and she was so empathetic and kind that he had wondered if maybe she was holding back for his sake.

 

He was about to say something further, though he wasn’t entirely sure what, when they heard the front door open.

 

“Oh my god are you guys okay!?!,” Ella said as she came in.

 

She started coughing and only then did Robb realise that smoke was actually emanating from the pan. He went to open a window as Sansa grabbed her some water.

 

Ella drank it gratefully, giving him ample time to look at her. She wore navy blue running shorts and a white tank top revealing a sliver of tanned, toned stomach. Her hair was up in a braided ponytail and her cheeks were flushed and she looked like a sexy tennis player.

 

“Okay,” Jon said as he came in huffing and puffing, “I know that a deal’s a deal,” he said, taking the glass of water gratefully from Ella and gulping the rest down, “But I’m not eating that,” he said gesturing to the pan.

 

“Oh Jon don’t be silly,” Ella said, “That’s a typical Netherlandish dish…it’s supposed tosmoke like that…isn’t that right, baby?,” she asked scrunching her nose at him adorably, “What’s it called again?”

 

She looked so pretty and he hadn’t had coffee yet so his brain was a little fuzzy and he said dumbly, “A….frittata.”

 

Ella looked at the pan and then back at him, repeating it once or twice and then said with a small smile, “You were making a frittata?’

 

“They’re your favorite,” he pointed out.

 

Without preamble she launched herself into his arms, wrapping her arms and legs around him.

 

“You’re the best bodyguard I’ve ever had,” she said lovingly.

 

“Well you’re the best body I’ve ever guarded…,” he said lovingly back.

 

“I would literally rather eat _that_ than watch _this_ ,” Jon said from behind them and Ella threw her head back and laughed.

 

“You’re dating my sister,” Robb pointed out, “That makes us even.”

 

He caught Jon’s eye as he turned to his side. Ella made no move to get down and she turned to Jon too, her cheek pressed against his.

 

“Yeah,” Jon said with a small smile, looking at Ella the way he knew he looked at Sansa, “Yeah I guess you’re right about that.”

 

***

 

They’d lost power around one o’clock and they’d opened the french doors out to the porch and the windows to let the cross breeze in.

 

She and Ella had painted each other’s toenails and then spent twenty minutes trying to convince Robb and Jon to do theirs as well to no avail. Turns out, even devotion such as theirs had its limits.

 

They were all lounging on the couches now. She was laying with her head in Jon’s lap with her eyes closed as he stroked her hair. He was reading something on his tablet and would rub the shell of her ear every now and then.

 

Ella and Robb were on the other couch. Ella was up against the back with Robb between her legs, his back to her chest as they both read from the same book.

 

She watched as Ella pointed to a spot on the page and then Robb shook his head no, telling her he hadn’t gotten there yet. She’d known Ella long enough to know that she would wait for him, not reading any further, so that when he got to that point she would experience it with him, the purity of it untainted by what came after it.

 

She watched as Robb got there and smiled, reading it again. He leaned his head back and kissed her before turning back so that they could both continue. Their eyes lit up at the same time, and Robb turned the page.

 

She watched as Ella leaned her chin on his shoulder, whispering something that made him reach behind and stroke the back of her head.

 

They were so incredibly in love with one another that it almost made her believe that they were all going to be alright. Love like that shouldn’t exist in the same world as the one they were in, a world of betrayal and manipulation, of debts settled in the night and grudges lasting centuries. Looking at them though, it was like being transported to a dreamworld. She loved them both so fiercely on their own, that seeing them together, happy and whole, brought tears to her eyes.

 

It made her feel awful, knowing the danger she was putting them in. They were all just kids, they weren’t supposed to be running from murderers and discovering secret societies. They were supposed to be here, spend their days at the beach, drink too much, fall more and more in love.

 

She sat up and said, “I think we are doing this wrong.”

 

They all turned to look at her and it was Robb who said, “What do you mean, Dovey?”

 

“I mean, that according to Varys - wait, cell phones?,” she asked, remembering what he’d said.

 

“Off,” Ella and Robb said.

 

“Upstairs,” Jon promised.

 

“According to Varys, our families, _all_ of our families, are involved in some… pilgrim illuminati situation. If he is to be believed, they started the Revolution… they ended slavery they… they…they orchestrated the Atomic Bomb,” she said, feeling ridiculous even as she was saying it. It was impossible, for a group of ten families to impact the history of the world so much without it being known. It was the stuff of conspiracy radio shows and reddit threads. “I know that we can’t trust them. That we need answers before we…any of us…have relationships with them but… Baelish betrayed them. He killed one of their own, he’s trying to kill _me,_ don’t you think that is the sort of thing they’d be happy to handle?”

 

“We’ll keep you safe,” Jon promised.

 

“Nothing is going to happen to you, Sansa,” Robb said.

 

“And what about you?,” she asked him. “Look at how happy you make my best friend! Do you think I could live with myself if she lost you because of me? And you’re… you’re my big brother,” she said, tears filling her eyes, “I just got you back and…”

 

Jon wrapped his arm around her, “Shhh shh sweet girl it’s alright, we’re all going to be alright.”

 

“You can’t say that,” she said, wrestling out of his arms. He looked hurt and she was sorry for it but she didn’t want platitudes. She didn’t want to be comforted like a stupid little girl. She wanted to tear the throats out of anyone who would harm the three people in this room. “You don’t know. None of us do.”

 

She got out of the couch and went upstairs. She would have preferred the beach but it was still raining and Robb and Jon wouldn’t let her go on her own. She paced, thinking about what she should do.

 

She thought about what her mother had done all those years ago. She wondered now if it had really all been for her. Or if she didn’t know what Sansa knew. That there was no way her father wouldn’t have done everything to protect her, died to protect her. That there was no way to keep her safe without risking him. Not if they stayed.

 

With that, she calmly started to pack.

 

***

 

“Should I go up there?,” Jon asked her.

 

“I don’t think so,” Ella said, “Let’s just leave her be. I’ll check on her when we are ready for lunch.”

 

He nodded and Robb relaxed too. They had too much faith in her, she who was wondering if she should run upstairs right now to comfort Sansa. To let her cry or scream, to go out and buy new plates just so that Sansa could smash them. She wasn’t sure if leaving her to herself was the right thing or the wrong thing, but they seemed to agree so she sat cross legged on the couch and thought about what Sansa had said.

 

“Tell me about Thorne,” she said calmly.

 

They told her all about their boss and the plans he’d set out for his other guys this summer, the ones who were tracking Baelish. They told her everything they knew about him, about the murders and the alleged sex trafficking. They told her about their training and the resources they had at their disposal.

 

“He isn’t going to kill her,” she said and they both looked up at her, “I mean…he _would_ kill her, eventually, or out of desperation. But that’s not what he wants. He wants _her_.”

 

“We don’t know that,” Jon said.

 

“Yes we do,” Robb said. “She looks like her mother…our mother. She’s the last Tully girl. He wants her. He’ll only kill her if he can’t have her.”

 

She got up from the couch and went into the kitchen, coming back into the living room with her phone. She’d never spent so much time with it off, but ever since Varys had come she’d turned it on only once a day. She and Sansa had disabled all of their social media accounts, not wanting to leave Baelish a trail of breadcrumbs.

 

She turned it back on, smiling briefly at her background picture. It was her and Sansa on the hood of her convertible, milkshakes in hand and heart sunglasses on their faces, their cheeks pressed against one another.

 

_He’ll only kill her if he can’t have her._

 

With that, she dialled the familiar number that she never thought she’d dial again.

 

The person picked up on the second ring, “Myrcella?”

 

“Grandfather, we need to talk.”

 

*

 

An hour later they had a plan. She wasn’t entirely sure that it was a good plan, but it was a plan nonetheless.

 

She, Robb and Jon walked upstairs to go tell Sansa what had been decided. What they’d do now.

 

“Dovey?,” she asked, knocking on the door of Sansa and Jon’s room. “Can we come in?”

 

She didn’t hear anything and she though that Sansa had probably fallen asleep. Fear and grief exhausted her the way they gave Ella a restless energy. She opened the door slowly.

 

The bed was made, but Sansa definitely wasn’t in it.

 

“Dovey?,” she repeated, walking in fully now.

 

She checked the bathroom, the little porch.

 

Her eyes met Robb and Jon’s in fear and she walked slowly and purposefully over to the closet. She opened it and found one side filled with Jon’s things, while the other had only hangers dangling.

 

Sansa was gone.


	15. A sweet poison, but it will kill you all the same

“Ella, come back here!,” Robb cried as she dashed down the stairs.

 

He and Jon were after her in a moment but she’d already made it outside. She didn’t care that she was barefoot or in her men’s white silk pajamas, she didn’t feel the rain as it beat down on her. She started running in the direction of the little town, where she and Sansa had seen only the day before that a greyhound bus stopped every hour on the hour.

 

_“Imagine seeing the country that way,” Sansa said as they licked their ice cream cones._

 

_“With only a change of clothes and a book,” Ella mused._

 

_“And you,” Sansa said with a smile._

 

_“You’d leave Robb and Jon?,” Ella asked curiously._

 

_The thought seemed nearly impossible now, the four of them had grown woven together like vines._

 

_“No,” Sansa said, “Not now. But it’ll always be you and me, right?”_

 

_“Always, Dovey,” she promised. “There is no Ella Baratheon without Sansa Stone.”_

 

_“And what if we weren’t Sansa Stone and Ella Baratheon?,” Sansa asked with a teasing lilt, “What if we were Thelma and Louise? Or Jonquil and Alysanne? Persephone and Aphrodite?”_

 

_“Elizabeth and Jane,” Ella offered, accepting a bite of Sansa’s pistachio ice cream._

 

_“The Bennett sisters,” Sansa smiled, “I like it. Come now - Mr. Darcy!,” Sansa called to Jon who had been trailing behind finishing up a call, all thoughts of leaving forgotten as Jon came up behind them and wrapped an arm around each of their shoulders._

 

_“Mr. Darcy?,” he asked with a chuckle, “I’m not really as bad as all that am I?”_

 

_“More broody, less prejudiced,” Sansa confirmed, “It’s just that Robb is such a Bingley, is he not?”_

 

_“A simple fool in love?,” Jon asked with a grin, tugging Ella’s ponytail gently, “Sounds about right.”_

 

“Ella!,” Robb said as he caught up to her, picking her up from behind.

 

“LET ME GO!,” she argued, thrashing her limbs.

 

“No,” Robb said calmly, tightening his hold on her, “Stop struggling, sweetheart, I don’t want to hurt you.”

 

“IT’S SANSA!,” she argued, trying futilely to remove herself from his iron grasp.

 

“I know, I know. She is my sister and yours and nothing is going to happen to her, but in order for me to focus on finding her I need you to be safe,” he said as he carried her back to the house. “Ella cut it out!,” he growled in a less friendly tone when she elbowed him.

 

 _No no I have to find her_.

 

He walked them back into the house up the stairs to their bedroom and plopped her roughly on the bed. He was treating her like a child but she would not be deterred. She scrambled off the bed and pulled on her running shoes.

 

“Where do you think you are going?,” he asked her.

 

“I know her better than anyone,” she said, _and I still missed this_ , “You won’t find her without me.”

 

“Yes. We will,” he said firmly. “You are going to stay here in case she thinks better of it and comes back.”

 

“She’s out there all alone and you want me to sit here and wait like some princess in a tower? I DO NOT WANT TO BE SAVED!,” she shouted at him stubbornly.

 

“I DO NOT CARE WHAT YOU WANT,” he growled back. “Now stay put or so help me God, Ella, I will tie you to the bedpost.”

 

She didn’t doubt that he would do it. He had done it two nights before, but that was for different reasons. Even still she knew how tightly he could make the knots.

 

 

The longer they stood there, the further away Sansa was getting. Ella had no idea where Jon was, he had just kept going when Robb had carried her back inside kicking and screaming.

 

“If something happens to her out there while I am sitting here I will _never_ forgive you,” she warned.

 

“I know,” he nodded, “And you can hate me all you want - for the rest of your life - so long as it’s a long one.”

 

He pressed a kiss to her forehead and just like that he turned to leave.

 

_Hate you? I could never hate you. Don’t you see that’s the problem?_

 

“Robb!,” she pleaded.

 

“Yeah?,” he asked, turning around with hope in his eyes.

 

“Check the bus station,” she said. _I love you_. “See if any reservations were made under the name Elizabeth Bennett.” _Be safe._

 

He gave her one last long look and then she heard him running down the stairs, the front door opening and slamming shut. She kicked off her running shoes in anger. She felt like a caged lion, angry and useless.

 

_I should have told him I loved him. I should have told him that even if I never forgave him, I’d love him forever._

 

It was to a chorus of should haves that she fell asleep in a tearful, fitful slumber as though she really were a princess in a castle under a spell. It could have been hours or days that she slept, but all she knew was that she didn’t wake until she heard the front door slam once again.

 

***

 

Jon ran forward, turning his cell phone on as he did. He wasn’t entirely sure where he was going but this was the direction that Ella was running and she knew Sansa better than anyone. If she’d been heading this way then this was the direction Sansa went. He was surer of that than he was of anything else.

 

He got to the centre of town. It was only dusk, though with the rain it seemed darker, and he was grateful that it was not a sunny day, for there were no tourists to be staring at him like he’d gone mad. He’d nearly lost the girls yesterday when they walked through town because of the sheer amount of people, but now it was deserted.

 

He dialled Sansa’s number but it went to voicemail like he knew it would.

 

_Hi you’ve reached Sansa Stone, well technically you haven’t, you’ve reached her machine. *giggles* Anyway, leave a message and I’ll return it once I transport back in time to 1995._

 

“Sansa, Dovey, come back,” he pleaded, “Come back sweet girl. We’ll sort it all out. Robb and I are going to keep you safe, you and Ella. You were right, okay? We shouldn’t handle this on our own. We have a plan but…in order for it to work WE NEED YOU. I need you. Come back, my love, please, please come back.”

 

He didn’t care that he sounded pathetic. His girl was out there somewhere with a human-trafficking-murdering-maniac hell bent on finding her and he felt like his heart had left his body, traveling with her wherever she went.

 

He saw Robb running towards him, and he wondered briefly if he’d tied Ella to something to keep her in the house.

 

“The bus station,” Robb shouted and Jon took off into a sprint.

 

There was a single woman working there. She looked old and bored, but he figured there was no way she wouldn’t remember Sansa.

 

“Ma’am, did you see an eighteen year old girl with auburn hair and blue eyes?,” he asked her.

 

“She’s 5’9 and no more than 120 pounds,” Robb added, “And she’s got a birthmark on her right cheek.”

 

“So what if I did?,” the woman said.

 

“What bus did she get on?,” he asked.

 

“Where was she going?,” Robb asked at the same time.

 

“Now lookey here, I’ve been at this a long time. I’ve seen a lot of pretty girls showing up here with tears running down their faces. And I’ve seen a lot of husbands and boyfriends and Daddy’s lookin’ after ‘em. I’ll tell you what I tell _all of them_ \- when a girl runs away from you, it don’t mean she want to be chased,” she said.

 

“Please,” he begged, “We aren’t like that. We just want to keep her safe. Please, she’s scared, but not of us. She’s…she’s scared _for_ us, please just tell us where she went.”

 

“Scared _for_ you?,” the lady asked, “What is she afraid yer trust funds was gonna beat yer asses?”

 

“She is my little sister,” Robb went on, “I’d never hurt her. He’d never hurt her. I respect what you’re doing but I am finding her one way or another because there is someone out there who _does_ want to hurt her. I can’t keep her safe if she isn’t with me. Please.”

 

The woman looked like she might start to break, clearly taking in the fear in Robb’s earnest blue eyes, the sympathy in their features that were so obvious he couldn’t believe he hadn’t seen them since the beginning.

 

“Sansa Stone,” he said, “Please, did anyone come under that name?”

 

“Nope,” she said.

 

“Stark?,” he amended, wondering if she would travel under her true name.

 

“Ain’t nobody named Sansa pass through here,” she said.

 

“Bennett!,” Robb said as though just remembering something. “Ma’am, _Elizabeth Bennett_ was here, wasn’t she?”

 

“She was,” the woman nodded, “Not anymore.”

 

“Which way did she go?,” Jon asked.

 

The woman sighed and said, “She got on the 5 o’clock to Dallas.”

 

“Thank you, thank you, where’s the next stop?,” Robb asked.

 

“You missed the next stop, next one you may make is Heartache, Texas, set to arrive at 6:20,” she said with a small smile.

 

Girls young and old had always loved Robb Stark.

 

“Thank you, ma’am,” Robb said, kissing the back of the old woman’s hand, “Thank you!”

 

With that he set off once again and Jon followed, back to the house to grab the car.

 

***

 

Jon kept dialling Sansa’s number and it went to voicemail every time. They had all grown so used to keeping their cell phones off so that they could speak freely, so that they couldn’t be tracked, that it didn’t surprise him she didn’t have it on.

 

“Call Ella,” Robb said.

 

Jon dialled and it went straight to voicemail as well.

 

_Hi this is - well shouldn’t you know that already? Anyway leave a message, - wait Sansa how do you turn this thing off - oops - wait - *giggle* -_ **_Sansa’s voice:_ ** _El it’s right there! How Yale accepted you I’ll never know -_ **_Ella’s voice_ ** _: Dovey that’s a secret and seriously this button won’t wo-_

 

The machine beeped and they sat in silence until Jon looked over at him.

 

He cleared his throat, “Hey it’s Robb…we know where Sansa is and where she’s heading. We’re on our way there and hopefully we’ll be back with you by seven. Lock the doors, okay, sweetheart? I - I’m so sorry for what I said. I do care what you want I just… I need you to be safe. I can’t think straight if you’re not and… anyway just call me when you get this or if you hear from Sansa just tell her to stay put, that she doesn’t have to run. Tell her everything, the whole plan. I’m going to bring her back to you, I promise. I…I lo-I’ll see you soon, bye…”

 

Jon hit end and they drove in silence. They were beginning to see signs for Heartache. It was six o’clock and they had fifteen miles to go so he stepped on the gas. Ella’s car was so much faster than the SUV they’d been driving, and he felt it coming to life underneath his foot.

 

“Why didn’t you tell her?,” Jon asked.

 

“Tell her what?,” Robb evaded.

 

“That you love her, man,” Jon shook his head in annoyance as though it were obvious.

 

Robb’s jaw clenched and he stepped on the gas a little harder, “Because I haven’t.”

 

“What are you waiting for? You’ve loved her since Rhode Island,” Jon said, “And she’s loved you since Ohio.”

 

“You’re wrong,” Robb said, shaking his head, “I’ve loved her since New York City.”

 

“New York City? That was the first day of the trip,” Jon remembered.

 

“Yep - she wore a light blue sundress and she drank whiskey with the bartender. There was some Harvard douchebag hitting on her and she couldn’t even keep a straight face…but she didn’t fall in love with me until Louisville,” he said, thinking of the heaviness of the night and the feel of her in his arms for the first time.

 

He thought of the little breath she took before she leaned up and kissed him, as though she was jumping from one cliff to another. He remembered her in her men’s pajamas, the same ones she’d been wearing today, the way she’d said _I’ve never done this before so tell me if I’m doing it wrong_ as though there might be a test that she’d fail.

 

“The way I see it,” Jon said, “There’s an awful lot of country between us and Louisville, even more between us and New York City. None of us knows what’s going to happen now, not now that we’ve involved the order,” they both felt a chill in the car and shivered in memory of Ella’s call with her grandfather, “I’d think twice about holding back love.”

 

“Let’s just find Sansa,” Robb said.

 

He knew Jon was right. He’d tell her as soon as they got back. He didn’t care if Ella slapped him across the face for leaving her there or told him to go to hell, he’d tell her he loved her. He’d pick her up and hold her to him and she’d say _Well what am I supposed to do with that?_ And he’d say _Kissing me would be a good start_. She’d start to say something clever but then he’d kiss her, kiss her until she was breathless. When he’d pull away she’d lean in and kiss him again and then say _I’m still mad at you, you know, but I love you all the same._

 

But first they had to find Sansa. Sansa, sweet, innocent Sansa. The little sister he was only just getting to know but who had made her home in his heart all the same. Sansa who only wanted to keep them safe, who had been listening to them all, all summer, telling her that they’d protect her, when all she wanted to do was protect them back.

 

He didn’t forget about his promise to Ella, the one he’d left in the note along with his heart in that hotel in Nashville.

 

_Run, Petyr Baelish. Run far and run hard. Run as far South as South goes or so far West you hit the sun. I’ll find you. Wherever you go, whatever you do, I’ll find you. You will live to regret the day you declared war on the girls I love, but not long after._

 

***

 

“Heartache, Texas,” the driver said as the pulled into the bus depot, “We’ll leave for Mission in ten minutes, all back on the bus in ten minutes.”

 

Sansa thought back to her conversation with Ella the day before. She’d packed in such a haste that she hadn’t brought a book. More importantly, she hadn’t brought Ella.

 

_I’m sorry, Ellabell. Make them understand, they listen to you. Sometimes anyway. Make them see that this is for the best._

 

She knew her hopes were futile. She wasn’t sure who out of the three of them would be the easiest to convince that she was making the right decision, but she knew it wouldn’t be Ella. In truth, it was a three way tie between them who was the most stubborn, the most loyal, the most loving.

 

Her heart felt like it was going to tear in two. She imagined the scene at the house when they found out she was gone. She should have left a note, or, something. She just couldn’t take it anymore, Robb and Jon promising to keep her safe. As though that mattered to her if they were not. As though she should be relieved that they would do anything to keep her alive - even if it meant dying themselves.

 

_I’m the one he wants. He won’t hurt me. It’s them he’ll hurt._

 

She hadn’t learned quite as much about Petyr Baelish as Ella had. They’d only told her the condensed version, and even that was enough to scare her. That he’d killed her uncle by marriage and then become her uncle by marriage. That his wife, her aunt, had died under suspicious circumstances. That there were girls who had disappeared after meeting him in a bookstore or in a bar. That he was the kind of person who gave bad men what they wanted most.

 

She would turn her cell phone on when she got to Dallas. She’d block Ella and Robb and Jon on social media and she’d take a picture of herself in a cowboy hat. She’d caption it something like _Even the smiles are bigger in Texas_ and would pin her location. And then she’d wait.

 

She’d walk right up to him, right up to him and say _I hear you’ve been looking for me._

 

He’d be surprised but he’d try not to show it and he’d say something like _Most girls’d run from the big bad wolf._

 

And she’d say _I’m a Stark, I don’t run from wolves, I run with them._

 

And then she’d stab him. Or something equally satisfying.

 

She’d call Ella and say _We’re safe now, meet me in Santa Fe. You bring the boys and I’ll find us some horses._

 

Ella would giggle and say _You’re crazy but I love you anyway. We’re coming for you Dovey, and you and I are going to show these boys how the West was won._

 

Sansa smiled at the thought, a tear running down her face because she knew it was only a fantasy. More than likely, she was heading straight to her death. But not to theirs.

 

She looked out the window and saw people starting to file back onto the bus. She closed her eyes, hoping that when she woke she’d be in Dallas.

 

“Sansa, oh thank god,” she heard from above her.

 

_No, no, no, no, no._

 

“Nothing’s changed,” she said stubbornly. “I’m not going back.”

 

“Yes you are,” Jon said. _Jon_. There was hurt in his voice, “You’d leave without saying goodbye?”

 

“I couldn’t,” she said, opening her eyes. She looked at the two boys she loved most in the world and shook her head, “Not to any of you. Please, please just let me go.”

 

“I can’t,” Robb said, as Jon grabbed her duffle from above her seat. Robb pulled her up. He was far too strong for her, but the truth was, her resolved had broken the minute she’d heard his voice. “You see the thing is, there’s this very beautiful, very angry girl waiting back in Galveston and she loves you more than anybody in this world. I can’t go back to her unless I’ve got you with me. And this one,” he said pointing at a smirking Jon, “Says I’ve got to go and tell her that I love her.”

 

“You haven’t told her you _love_ her yet?,” she asked in spite of her self.

 

“No,” Robb said, “What do you say, Dovey, will you help me?”

 

He was smart, too smart for her. He knew, they all knew, that either one of them could have thrown her over their shoulder and pulled her back. But even still her big brother pretended as though it was her choice, and she loved him for that. That and the fact that he’d found her, and that he loved her enough to chase after her, and that he loved the girl waiting for them all back in Galveston.

 

“Yeah, I’ll help you,” she said and let him pull her towards the front of the bus.

 

They watched it drive away without her on it and then she turned to them.

 

Robb looked at her sternly and then pulled her into his arms, “Never do that again, Dovey. God do I love you, little one.”

 

“I love you too, I’m sorry. I just… I saw you and Ella and you make her so happy, and she makes you so happy… I couldn’t stand coming in between that,” she said. He opened his mouth to challenge her, so she continued, “But I won’t run away again.”

 

He kissed her hair and grabbed her bag from Jon, going to put it in the trunk, but also, she knew, to give her and Jon a moment.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said feebly.

 

His eyes were black as they looked at her and he crossed to her in two strides, gathering her face in his hands as his lips descended on hers. He kissed her furiously but slowly, and she fell against him.

 

“I don’t forgive you, you are not forgiven, do you understand?,” he demanded. She nodded and he kissed her again like she was forgiven. “I love you, Sansa,” he said, kissing her cheeks and her forehead and her eyelids, “There is no world for me without you. I will never forgive you for putting me through this.”

 

“Jon,” she cried and kissed him again. He was right. How could she leave him behind? He never would have done it to her. Never. “You don’t have to. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

 

He hugged her as though he didn’t much care if he crushed the life from her and she hugged him back.

 

“I forgive you a little,” he mumbled after a minute or two. She pulled away and smiled, and he pointed at her, “But only a little, is that clear?”

 

She nodded and he kissed her once more, taking her hand and leading her to the car. Robb had already gotten into the back seat, so Jon let her into the passenger and walked around to the driver’s seat.

 

They pulled out onto the highway and Robb tried Ella again, but got no answer.

 

“You try her,” he suggested.

 

She rolled her eyes but turned on her phone. She saw all the calls she’d missed from Jon and squeezed the hand that held her thigh.

 

She dialled Ella and was surprised to hear it ringing.

 

“That’s a good sign,” Jon said.

 

She saw the timing start and she said, “El? Ellabell?”

 

“I’m sorry,” a chilling voice came across the line, “Ella can’t come to the phone right now.”

 

“W-who is this?,” she asked as she looked into Robb’s terrified eyes.

 

“Oh come on, Sansa, you’re a smart girl, just like your mother was at your age,” the man said.

 

“Baelish,” she seethed.

 

“Ah there it is, a Tully through and through, not much Stark in you, thankfully,” he said.

 

“Yeah well there’s enough in me for the both of us,” Robb growled, “If you harm one hair on her head I will tear you to pieces.”

 

“Oh I think we can leave her hair alone, don’t you boys?,” he said and she felt her blood run cold, “There’s enough to keep us occupied otherwise.”

 

“Where are you, you piece of shit?,” Jon said.

 

“There’s a reason I didn’t pick up any of your calls,” Baelish said, “I’m only interested in speaking to one person.”

 

“What do you want?,” Sansa asked. “Please, just don’t hurt her. I’ll do whatever you want.”

 

“Oh Sansa, I like the sound of that very much.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Covers eyes and hesitantly spreads fingers to see if people hate me*


	16. A Form of Chemical Madness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I would be very surprised if I didn't finish this story this weekend. I have it all mapped out, it's just about getting the moments right. 
> 
> Anyway - would love your feedback. For obvious reasons, this was very difficult to write. Changing the rating to M.

She woke to the sound of water dripping. It wasn’t the slow, almost calming sound of the storm outside, but one steady, _drip, drip, drip_ that seemed to ring in her ears.

 

The back of her head hurt and when she went to touch it she found she could not. _Did Robb really do it_? she wondered as she looked down at her bound wrists. Robb had used silk though, silk so soft it had caressed her wrists as it restricted, as he chuckled and said _No, no, sweetheart, this time it’s only for you, I don’t want you to worry about touching me at all_. The knots he’d tied hadn’t bit into her wrists, hadn’t chafed them when she tried to free herself.

 

_Drip, drip, drip._

 

Robb too had tied her to their bedpost, making sure she was comfortable as she lay back against the pillows. _Please kiss me_ , she’d begged and if he’d thought to tease her, it went out the window with that request, lowering his face to hers and kissing her softly. _I love you_ that kiss said, even if he did not. Now though, she was standing, tied to some metal pole, a support, she was sure for whatever structure she found herself in.

 

_Drip, drip, drip._

 

She hadn’t been scared when Robb had proffered one of her Hermes scarves, running it through his fingers as he looked her up and down. Not for a minute. He was Robb, _her_ Robb.

 

_Robb where am I?_

 

She looked around at the dark, dank space. It could be a basement or a warehouse, it was poorly lit and musty, but it gave the perception of going on indefinitely. There were doors, open doors. It was worse than a bar or chains on them. It said _Go on, run, I dare you. Give us a scream, no one’s around to hear you._

 

“Ah my dear, you’re awake,” a measured, gravelly voice said from behind her.

 

That voice was worse than the dripping. It was like nails on a chalkboard and she felt goosebumps rise on her skin. She’d been sweating, it was Texas in the summer after all, but now she felt a chill run down her spine.

 

“Baelish,” she guessed.

 

“Smart girl,” he said as he came up right behind her. He placed his hand on the back of her head almost gently, but she still winced when it brushed against the tender spot. He noticed and said simply, “You shouldn’t have struggled.”

 

It all came rushing back to her. She’d fallen asleep in a fit of rage and fear and woken to hear the front door slam.

 

_“Dovey, Dovey is that you?,” she asked, rushing to the stairs._

 

_“Afraid not,” a giant, oaf of a man said._

 

_She sprinted into Jon and Sansa’s bedroom, there was only one set of stairs and she’d never get past him but their room had a balcony off of it. It wasn’t a large house, she could jump, she could run. She just needed the keys._

 

_She slammed the door shut, locking it and then turned to find them. Jon had driven the car last, so she checked his bedside table but found nothing. There was nothing on the dresser either and that is when she started to hear it. Bang, bang, bang._

 

_Drip, drip, drip._

 

Her head pounded now as she remembered the way the man had chuckled as she picked up a lamp. She wished she’d been in the kitchen. He wouldn’t find her so funny with a knife in her hand.

 

_“You don’t want to do this,” she warned, thinking of Jon shouting words of encouragement on the beach only that morning, “I’ve been training for you.”_

 

_“And what about me, Princess?,” another man asked, even larger than the first._

 

_Drip, drip, drip._

 

“Well you see, you’re far more experienced at this than I,” she said, all but batting her eyelashes at him, “Tell me, how does this usually go?”

 

_Keep him talking. If he is with you, it means he doesn’t have her._

 

He gave her a small smile as though he knew what she was doing and then said, “I dare say my reputation is far worse than I deserve…”

 

“Oh come now, Baelish,” she said. _Sansa, run._ “It’s just you and me out here. We’re all alone, aren’t we? You can tell me.”

 

“You do look like you can keep a secret,” he said, brushing a bit of hair off of her face. “You see, my dear, most of the girls aren’t like you. They are the daughters of shopkeepers or teachers, they hear all about a big, wide, world and they come willingly. But you, you’re special, aren’t you? It’ll take more than promises of far off lands to tempt you.”

 

“Depends on the land, I suppose,” she said haughtily.

 

He chuckled, “You see? You’re different. _Special_.”

 

“And how am I special?,” she asked.

 

He smiled at her and it made her blood run cold.

 

“Because she loves you,” he said simply.

 

_Drip, drip, drip._

 

***

 

Jon pulled over off the highway. He couldn’t drive he was shaking so much. He needed air. He needed something to break. He needed Petyr Baelish’s throat to throttle.

 

_“I’ll do whatever you say,” Sansa promised._

 

_“Oh Sansa,” that smarmy voice said, “I like the sound of that very much.”_

 

_“What…do you want?,” she asked._

 

_“You, my love, isn’t it obvious?,” he said._

 

_“You will never have her,” Robb promised, “And when I find you I am going to-“_

 

_The man on the other line chuckled and said, “Robb Stark… so like your father. I have no doubt that you’d gladly kill me for her. But what will happen to your darling Ella if you do? She really is a beauty. So innocent too, just recently plucked I’d wager - and I’m never wrong about these things. Tell me, were you her first? How does she like it? It won’t much matter to my patrons but I am a magnanimous man…”_

 

_“Please,” Sansa cried, “Don’t hurt her. Please, please, please - for me!”_

 

_“Oh my love, anything for you. I’ll be good to you, Sansa, you’ll see. But first…”_

 

They all got out of the car but he ran to the bushes first and puked up everything that was in his stomach.

 

He thought of Ella, sweet, lovely Ella, running on the beach that morning, vowing to protect him. Vowing to gut anyone that tried to harm him, harm them. He was going to start training her in self-defence tomorrow. Had already come up with a workout routine for them. They were going to start with boxing. He shouldn’t have hesitated. He should have been training her every day since Ohio.

 

_I failed you. I’m so sorry. Just be strong, be strong a little while longer and I swear we are coming for you._

 

He thought of her arms and legs wrapped around Robb, her cheek pressed so sweetly to his, a small smile on her lips.

 

_“You’re dating my sister, that makes us even,” Robb said._

 

_“Yeah,” Jon said, looking at the girl he loved more than his own life. The girl who could always make him smile. The girl he’d go to war for. “Yeah I guess you’re right about that.”_

 

He wiped his mouth and went back to where Sansa and Robb were already arguing, as though they had been doing it their whole lives.

 

“I have to go!,” Sansa was saying.

 

“No,” Jon growled.

 

“Robb,” she pleaded, crossing to her big brother and taking his hand in hers.

 

She was smart. She knew he was a lost cause. There was no way he’d agree to anything that put her in harms way. Robb though, well that had been the question on everyone’s lips since Nashville. There were no words for the way Robb loved Ella. He’d burn cities to the ground for her, raze villages.

 

“He’s right,” Robb said, his voice like ice. “You can’t go.”

 

Jon’s heart broke for him, because he knew. He knew that if the roles were reversed, they’d both be telling Ella the same thing. That it would have been Jon she’d turned to, knowing Robb a lost cause where her safety was concerned, and that he would have the same hollowness in his tone when he refused her.

 

It wasn’t that they were choosing Sansa over her, even though she’d made them both promise that they would.

 

“If the roles were reversed do you think Ella would have even _hesitated_? She would already be there by now!,” Sansa argued, mirroring his thoughts as she so often did.

 

“Just because it’s what she would have done, doesn’t make it right,” Jon pointed out solemnly, thinking of the brilliant girl whose heart was even bigger than her brain.

 

They were beyond reason though. Had been for some time.

 

“It’s ELLA!,” she raged at them, as though that said it all, because it did.

 

“You think I don’t _know_ that?,” Robb raged back. “Do you think I wouldn’t rather set myself on fire than have her with him for a moment longer. I would risk my life for hers but you will not! BAELISH DOES NOT GET WHAT HE WANTS!,” he bellowed at her and she flinched. Robb closed his eyes and pulled his little sister into his arms, “I know you’re frightened, I know. I am too, I love her, Sansa b-“

 

“It’s not the same,” Sansa said. He went to protest but she wasn’t finished, “I didn’t have brothers or sisters growing up. I only had her, and she had me. That’s it, that’s all. Her blood runs through my veins! She is out there at the mercy of a man that wants _me_. He doesn’t want either of you - he doesn’t want her - he wants ME! I can save her, Robb,” she said, placing her hands on his shoulders and looking into his eyes. He shook his head so she tried another tactic, “You _know_ what he does with beautiful girls -“

 

“Stop talking,” Robb warned, walking away from her.

 

“You can’t even bear to hear about it and she should have to live it? Because of me? No! How is that fair?,” she asked, tugging on his arm and pulling him back to face her, “Think about it Robb, he more or less just promised it. The _stunning_ Ella Baratheon. Yale bound. Fluent in five languages. Think about what a thoroughbred like her would fetch for him on the open market. She’s _Tywin Lannister’s granddaughter -_ dictators would line up for her - think about -“

 

“ENOUGH!,” Jon growled at her as Robb desperately looked for something to put his fist through.

 

Sansa stopped talking immediately, her lower lip trembling. They all stood silently in the truth of what she’d just said. She was right, dictators would line up for a chance to have her, to control her. She was a true American beauty, her lineage dated back to the Mayflower, her families had decided the fates of nations - just as his had, as all their families had - and every one of them would line up for a chance to settle scores. They might even try to control Tywin, and thus, if Varys was to be believed, the country, by holding her.

 

He thought of Ella in Nashville, sitting at a table full of locals, a bright grin on her face. _She’s just a girl though, she’s still a kid. She just wanted to have a summer road trip with her best friend. That’s all._

 

“Ella made me promise back in Nashville, that if the day ever came when I had to choose between her and you, that I would choose you,” Robb said finally.

 

“You didn’t,” she shook her head, “You _wouldn’t_.”

 

“I would and I did. It was a lie back then,” he said in apology, “And she knew it. So I made her a different one. I told her that I would kill Baelish so that I never had to make that choice. And that is what I am going to do,” Robb said. “Call him. Tell him you’ll meet him.”

 

“Robb!,” Jon protested.

 

Robb silenced him with a look and nodded at Sansa. She pulled out her phone and turned it back on. She went to call and Jon stopped her.

 

“Wait!,” he said, the wheels of his mind turning, “Just give me a minute.”

 

“Ella may not have minutes,” Sansa said.

 

“Just…just wait…,” he said, shaking his head.

 

His mind was going a mile a minute but he just kept coming back to one thing Sansa had said.

 

_She’s Tywin Lannister’s granddaughter._

 

***

 

“You know, my dear, this is usually the point in the evening where you would beg for your life, promise never to breathe a word of this if I only let you go, tell my associates here that you will double whatever it is that I am paying them,” he said in his calm, creepy voice. He shook his head as though he was disappointed that she was not playing her part of captive better, “You’ve not even told me who your family is.”

 

_Drip, drip, drip._

 

“You have been following me for over a month, you know perfectly well who my family is,” she said. He was playing with her, teasing her, and all she could think of was that _drip, drip, drip_. She didn’t have time for his games. Not when she was going mad. _Drip, drip, drip._ “You knew when you took me, which means one of two things,” she said, shaking her head. _Why do I have to explain this to you? Drip, drip, drip. “_ The first is that you think you will get away with it. The second is that you are purposefully antagonising them. If it is the former, then you are very stupid, and if it is the latter, then you are insane,” _Drip, drip, drip. “_ Either way you are not worth the breath it would take for me to beg.”

 

“There’s that notorious Lannister pragmatism,” he said and out of the corner of her eye she noticed as his thugs shifted.

 

She’d noticed them after a while, realising that they were not in fact alone. There were half a dozen of them. Two she recognised from the house, but the others were of the same make and model. Large with pock-marked unforgiving faces. They had been standing there silently, stoically the entire time, but not anymore.

 

One nearly took a step back from her and she saw the others looking between one another in silent conversation.

 

_Drip, drip, drip._

 

“As I said, you knew who my family was when you took me… but they didn’t,” she said, the minor flash of fear in his eyes confirming it.

 

“Boss -,” one of them started but Baelish silenced the giant with a look.

 

It was hard to pity them, they who would kidnap a teenage girl. Who would take Sansa given half the chance. In fact, she could not help but revel a bit in their surprise.

 

_You thought you’d found a doe in the woods, didn’t you? You dumb motherfuckers._

 

Maybe she had gone insane, maybe she truly had.

 

She turned to them and said, “What _is_ he paying you, out of curiosity? I’m sure it’s enough to keep you stocked in whatever substances you have to take just to get through every day _being_ you, but no matter what it is, no matter how much _blood money_ you take that was earned off of the lives of innocent girls, it isn’t enough. Surely even _your_ lives are worth more. If I thought you’d live until sundown tomorrow I’d recommend you find yourself a new boss. As it stands though…”

 

Baelish chuckled with false bravado, “You really are a clever girl, truly. Your grandfather would be proud. But tell me, my dear, what do you think a man on the brink of death craves, more than anything? And further, what does he really have left to lose?,” he asked, a smug look on his face. A pit formed in her stomach as she looked into his soulless black eyes, and he turned away from her, opening his arms out to his thugs and asked gamely, “Isn’t she a pretty little thing, boys?”

 

The men had stopped shifting, instead, now they were looking at her with unmistaken lust in their eyes. Lust and anger. It was a terrifying combination.

 

“Look at those lips, Reg,” one of them said, “I wouldn’t mind feeling those wrapped around me once before I die.”

 

“Careful,” she warned, full of false bravado as well, “We Lannister’s are lions after all, anything comes too close to my fangs and I might just _bite_ it off.”

 

“Ooh she’s got fight in her,” another said from behind her, “I like that. That and that pert little ass.” She felt his stale breath on her cheek as his hand squeezed her ass roughly, “Tell me Princess, you ever had a cock up there?”

 

She turned to him and said, “No but I hear _you_ like it just fine.”

 

He chuckled and then backhanded her so hard she was surprised her neck didn’t snap. She stumbled back, but the ties on her wrists made it so she didn’t fall. There was a ringing in her ears and she tasted blood in her mouth. She was going to spit it on the floor but turned at the last second.

 

She was unpracticed at it, having grown up a lady, so some dribbled on her pajamas but the majority hit him right in the face.

 

“You’re gonna regret that you little cunt,” he growled, “I’m gonna split you in _two_.”

 

It was then that she well and truly started to fight. She wished she and Jon had started self-defence training earlier, but she remembered a bit from high school. She forced her elbow into his gut and when he bent over in pain she forced it into his nose.

 

She was still clothed, he hadn’t yet touched her, but he made to now as he took her face in his hand.

 

“You’re a pretty girl,” he said, blood gushing down his face, “But you won’t be. Not when I’m done with you.”

 

She kicked at him, but her angle was all off and she couldn’t make contact. She finally felt tears prick her eyes as she felt her fate surrounding her.

 

 _Think of Robb_ , she told herself, _Think of his gentle hands._

 

She thought of him, of the firm but loving way he held her. The way he’d kiss all the freckles on her ribs, _one, two, three_ so that none of them would feel left out. The way he’d pause sometimes and just look at her, like he couldn’t believe where his life had taken him.

 

She thought that thinking of him might help, that she could trick her mind, or at the very least, transport it elsewhere. She thought of all the things she’d wished she’d said. Really just three little words. It would have been so simple, just to say them. It wouldn’t have taken any time at all. _I love you, Robb Stark, and it doesn’t matter if I die here and now, or in my bed when I’m 100, either way I’m going to love you for the rest of my life._

 

“Enough,” she heard Baelish say.

 

“Boss…,” the giant said, “She’s got it coming…”

 

“Perhaps,” Baelish said, “But she’ll not get it tonight.”

 

The man removed himself from her side and she felt a single tear drop down her cheek in relief.

 

“You see, my dear,” Baelish said to her, almost kindly, “You may think I’m a monster, but I’m the only one who’ll protect you from _them_. Call it stupidity or insanity, but either way, be grateful for it. Even still… it seems that some recourse is due…”

 

***

 

“Drive faster,” she pleaded.

 

“Calm down,” Robb said, “I can’t have you going in there without a clear head.”

 

“Is your head clear?,” she asked curiously.

 

He seemed so stoic, so matter of fact. He hadn’t cried, not once. Even Jon had cried, puking up everything he had in him. But not Robb. Not Robb with his calm gaze and his controlled voice.

 

“Crystal,” he said hollowly. She gave him a look and he turned briefly and swallowed hard, “It’s my heart that’s a wreck…”

 

She grabbed his hand and squeezed it. He squeezed it hard, so hard she was afraid he’d break it, but she just kept on squeezing it back.

 

Her phone rang and she looked down, hoping it was Jon. _Ella,_ she saw instead.

 

Seeing that name on her Caller ID had never filled her with anything but happiness. She’d pick up and say _Hey Ellabell, you on your way?_ or _What has the Queen done this time?_

 

Ella would always say something clever or funny, even when she was annoyed with her crazy family. She’d have a plan to do something fun or just to talk about the latest episode of Maze of Lords.

 

Now though, her heart sank.

 

“Hello?,” she asked in as strong a voice as she could manage.

 

“You are trying my patience, my love,” Baelish’ voice came through the speakerphone.

 

“I’m -,” she said looking at Robb and he nodded at her, “I’m sorry, I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’m on my way now, I…I can’t _wait_ to see you.”

 

“Ahh my love that makes me very happy,” he said, “Ella too… is growing impatient, aren’t you my dear?”

 

“RUN SANSA - GET AS FAR AWAY AS YOU CAN - THE ORDER WILL HELP YOU. GO _NOW_ ,” she cried and Sansa’s heart broke.

 

They heard the sound of a rough smack and then chuckles. Robb stepped on the gas, his hands gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles went white.

 

“Don’t hurt her!,” Sansa cried, “You, you promised.”

 

“I’m doing the best I can, my love,” Baelish said, “But she’s trying to keep us apart.”

 

_Because she loves me._

 

“She…she doesn’t know, honey,” she said, not even sure what she was saying, “She just doesn’t understand. She isn’t doing it on purpose. She just doesn’t understand our love.”

 

“Oh my love, you’re just as clever as she is, aren’t you?,” he asked. “She doesn’t understand, but she will. And so will you.”

 

“What are-,” she started but her phone started beeping, telling her she had a video request coming in.

 

She pressed accept and her eyes squinted to see, but then she saw a flash of white silk and then Ella’s face. It was sweaty and bloody but it was her, she was alive and whole.

 

“ELLA - ELLA I AM COMING FOR YOU,” she promised.

 

“No! Run Dovey, please. I’ll be fine, just go - go now,” Ella said shaking her head, not stopping until Baelish grabbed her face in his hands.

 

“Let go of her!,” she pleaded as Ella struggled to get away from him.

 

Robb was in danger of crashing the car because he was trying to see what was happening so she moved the phone so that he could see.

 

“I’m sorry, my love,” Baelish said, and her blood ran cold when she saw what he was holding.

 

He brought a knife, pressing the flat of it to Ella’s cheek. She saw Ella eye it warily, as though she could stop it from piercing her skin out of sheer force of will. If anyone could, it would be her.

 

Robb let out a deep, vicious growl, “You’re making a mistake, you _sick motherfucker_.”

 

“That’s ironic, coming from you” Baelish said, “How is Mommy? Haven’t seen in her in some time have you?,” then he shifted his gaze back to her, “You lied to me Sansa. You promised you’d come alone.”

 

“He’s just driving me. He’ll wait outside for Ella. To take her away, and I’ll stay with you. I promise, I promise, just _don’t_ hurt her.”

 

“Robb?,” Ella asked as though coming out of a daze.

 

“You’re going to be just fine, sweetheart, I promise. I’m coming for you, _I AM COMING FOR YOU, I PROMISE,”_ Robb vowed, tears falling from his eyes for the first time.

 

“You promised me,” she said, “Robb, remember… remember what you promised, please.”

 

Sansa wasn’t sure which promise she was referring to, but they didn’t have time to ask.

 

“Oh first loves,” Baelish said, “I remember my first love. Your dear mother. She was beautiful then too. Less so now. Such beauty…cannot last forever,” he said and turned back to Ella, “You’d learn that one day anyway.”

 

And with that he dug the knife into Ella’s cheek and dragged it down. It didn’t matter if Sansa died later that day or in her bed when she was 100 years old, the sound of Ella’s agonised screams would haunt her for the rest of her life.

 

The line went dead and they sat in the silent truth of what just happened. If there had been any doubt in either of their minds that this would end in death, it vanished in that moment. Either one, or both, or all of them would die that day - of that she was absolutely sure.

 

“Drive faster,” she said once again but the pedal was already on the floor.


	17. Is anybody out there?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD. 
> 
> I could not wait to finish this chapter. Seriously, work was a massive struggle. Thank you to my loyal commenters - I am so glad you all have stuck with me. 
> 
> Here we go...

 

The laughter had died down but the pain had not. She had wanted to be strong, to be brave, but when she felt the knife slice into her cheek like butter she realised it was all a lie. She wasn’t brave, just stupid. A stupid, stupid girl.

 

“My dear, there is one thing I’m curious about,” Baelish said.

 

She glared at him and as he started walking over she had to resist the urge to make her body smaller, to cower. 

 

_I will not hide, not from men like him._

 

 _“_ The order,” he whispered in her ear, “What do you know of it?”

 

She realised then that he didn’t want his associates to know. For what reason she wasn’t sure, could be because he believed they’d abandon him, or because he didn’t trust them not to speak of it. It didn’t much matter to her.

 

“I know that you can’t run from them,” she said simply. She looked up into his black eyes and saw fear. It struck her as impossibly funny so she gave into her laughter, “No matter what you do, or where you go. _They’ll find you_.”

 

“Is that so?,” he asked her. He whispered in her ear again, “And where are they now? Where are they going to be when I turn you over to my men and let them ravage you again and again?”

 

“Sansa doesn’t like liars,” she warned, as though she was only looking out for him. “If you turn me over to your men, she’ll never love you.”

 

He almost looked like he was going to hit her. As she looked into his dark, soulless eyes she could see that he wanted to. _No, he wants to kill me_. He hadn’t always, of that she was sure. At the beginning she had been a mere means to an end, someone he _would_ have killed but did not desire to. That had changed. At some point, she had gotten under his skin.

 

That thought filled her with a manic pride.

 

“Never is a very long time,” he said, “And she is so very…young,” he said lustfully, “She will learn, in time.”

 

“You’re a fool,” she said, she didn’t care if he killed her right now. He had to know. He had to know that he would never have her. That Sansa would never be his. That he would go to his grave a failure. “Sansa Stone- Sansa _Stark-_ will _never_ love you. Her blood runs through my veins and I am as sure of this as I am that I’m standing here right now. You’ve done this all wrong, don’t you see that? Can’t you see that you’ve failed already?”

He was going to say something, but just then they heard an angelic voice call, “Petyr?”

 

Tears filled her eyes and Baelish turned back and smirked at her.

 

“You sure about that?,” he asked.

 

***

 

Sansa had to fight the urge not to shake as she stepped into the abandoned warehouse.

 

_I am a Stark, I can be brave. I can be brave for her._

 

“Petyr?,” she called.

 

“In here, my love,” she heard his smarmy voice call.

 

She followed it. She wasn’t sure what time it was but the sky had turned from black to a deep purple outside. It did nothing to mitigate the overwhelming darkness of where she found herself now though.

 

_Drip, drip, drip._

 

She could feel Ella, she could sense her in a way that she never had before, and she followed that feeling, running now.

 

She stepped into a cavernous room and saw the men assembled, saw Baelish, saw _Ella_.

 

She was bloodied and surely dehydrated, she’d been savaged and held captive, but still her brave best friend screamed, “NOOOO! NOOOO! RUN SANSA NO!!!!”

 

_It’s my turn, Ella. It’s my turn to be brave. Trust me. Believe in me as I would in you._

 

“Oh my love, let me look at you,” Baelish said, ignoring the screaming girl as he stepped towards her. He looked at her, scanning up her legs that were bared to him in her shorts, up her torso and breasts, lingering on her neck, until he looked up and pouted, “Your hair is up.”

 

“Oh,” she said, touching it stupidly, feeling like she’d failed already.

 

“I had imagined it down,” he told her meaningfully.

 

She forced herself to smile at him as she went to remove her hair tie, ignoring the shaking in her fingers, “I’m so sorry,” she said as she tugged it, shaking her hair out, “Is that better?”

 

He let out an exulting breath and nodded, “Much better.”

 

“SANSA PLEASE RUN, GO, _PLEASE_ ,” Ella was calling, crying. Her wrists were surely bleeding from trying to fight out of the ropes, not to save her own life, but to save hers. “Please, please _just go_. Find Jon, he’ll keep you safe. Get married and have babies and let him protect you,” she babbled, releasing a deep wail, “ _Leave_.”

 

_Never. Never again._

 

“Stay out of this Ella,” she warned sharply, then turned to Baelish and smiled, stepping towards him. “See, honey, she just doesn’t understand is all. Let her go, so that you and I can start our lives together,” she said, standing right before him. She brought her hand up to his cheek, pulling him gently so that his focus would be on her, “Tell me, tell me what else you’ve imagined…”

 

He pulled her to him by her hips and she could feel his hardness against her. She swallowed the bile rising in her throat and smiled at him as best she could.

 

“I’ve im-,” he started, but something moved in his periphery and he turned to see what it was.

 

It was then that she finally brandished the knife and dug it deep into his stomach.

 

***

 

Waiting was torture. Not just one but both of the girls he loved were with _him_ and he felt impotent and terrified as he forced himself to be patient.

 

He watched as Sansa stepped bravely into the room. She was the picture of calm, her eyes never leaving Baelish as though she might get him in a trance.

 

He watched as Ella, courageous, selfless Ella cried for her to leave.

 

He remembered watching the two of them holding hands as they danced in New York. A simple look from one of them kept boys away from the other. They’d always defended one another, guarded one another.

 

He knew that all girls did it. That it was a part of going out in a group, that they’d danced together to say _she’s not alone_ , but he could tell even then that this was something different. That _they_ were different.

 

He’d seen it in Ohio when Ella had risked herself to fight the man off of Sansa. Had seen it in Nashville when he and Jon had pulled Sansa and Ella away from one another and they’d fought and scratched to stay together. He’d seen it in the way Sansa had fled, and the way Ella had pleaded.

 

_They are the strong ones, truly._

 

They had never been tested quite like this, but he knew deep in his bones that neither of them would waver. Neither of them would dream of it. There was no version of reality in which Sansa Stark and Ella Baratheon would not gladly die to protect the other.

 

He watched as Sansa walked towards a murdering psychopath, and he knew then that she deserved a better big brother. If they all made it out of here alive, which wasn’t likely, he would be that big brother for her. He would keep her safe, he’d keep the monsters away. He would kill them _all_.

 

“ _Tell me,”_ she said sweetly, her hand on Baelish’ cheek and he knew that this was his chance, “ _Tell me what you’ve imagined_.”

 

He ran to Ella, so quickly that none of the thugs amassed could understand let alone beat him.

 

He heard Baelish’s guttural moan as he reached Ella. She fought him, his brave, fearless girl.

 

“Shh, shh, sweetheart, it’s me,” he said, clamping his hand over her mouth as gently as he could.

 

She tilted her head back against him, her jade eyes filled with tears and then they closed as she let out a sob.

 

“I’m going to get you out of here,” he promised, letting go of her and moving to undo the ropes.

 

“Robb!,” she cried and he looked to where she was looking, where one of the thugs was charging them.

 

He grabbed his gun out of his back pocket and aimed. The man didn’t even make a sound as he hit the floor, but the gunshot caused mayhem, as men filled the warehouse, guns raised.

 

“KILL HER!,” he heard Baelish barking out orders, his voice mad with pain.

 

“Robb go, get Sansa,” she pleaded, “Please get her out of her. Please just keep her safe. Go.”

 

“I am not going anywhere without you, do you hear me?,” he demanded, and she nodded. He turned back and began to fight with the ropes binding her, promising, “I will _never_ leave you behind again.”

 

They might as well have been iron for how much they gave and in the meantime it felt like Baelish’s men were multiplying. He shot this one and that and still the ropes would not give. Her wrists were bleeding and chafed and he grunted as he tried to pull them desperately.

 

“Robb,” she said calmly as her forehead slumped against him, “ _I love you.”_

 

 

 

There was death and chaos going on all around them but even still he heard the finality in her soft tone.

 

“Don’t you dare, Ella Baratheon” he warned, pressing an errant kiss to her forehead, struggling with the ropes all the while, “Don’t you dare say goodbye to me. I am going to get you out of here, I promise, but I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”

 

“I trust you,” his brave girl promised, nodding against him.

 

“Lean back,” he told her.

 

She did what he asked and he took his gun and aimed it directly at the rope. It split apart instantly and Ella fell back. He caught her before she could fall to the ground and pulled her to him.

 

“Are you able to walk?,” he asked her, still supporting her, not wanting to let her out of his arms.

 

She’d been standing for so long, without water, without rest. She nodded vehemently and he held her to his chest with one arm, the other extended out, his gun scanning through the air as he looked for any who dare approach. They started walking but made slow progress, too slow.

 

“Robb there’s too many,” she said incredulously, looking around as well, her adrenaline making her movements nearly manic, “How are there so many?”

 

“Some of them our ours,” he told her, shooting one of Baelish’s men in the chest.

 

“Ours?,” she asked and looked around.

 

He wondered if she could make out who everyone was. If she saw the way Jon was fighting off two, only for a tall, blonde man to shoot one of them in the back. Even he couldn’t discern which were Thorne’s guys and which were her grandfather’s, but it didn’t much matter when they were fighting on the same side. Hers.

 

“Yours,” he clarified, “Your army.”

 

“Robb Stark you really are impressive,” she said before her eyes rolled to the back of her head.

 

***

 

The crack of the first gunshot was music to his ears as he and their men stormed the warehouse.

 

They picked men off like nothing, like the scum they were, but all he could think was _Sansa._

 

She was right there in the middle of it all. Baelish up against her.

 

He ran to her, pulling him off of her. Baelish stumbled back and he saw her hands holding the bloody knife. They were shaking.

 

“Sansa,” he said said, grabbing her face, “Go. We’ve got this. You don’t have to be here.”

 

“Yes I do,” she said, and in that moment she was more wolf than girl. “Step aside Jon.”

 

It took every ounce of strength he had to remove himself from Baelish’s path to her. It didn’t matter that he was slumped over clutching his stomach, or that there was an army of men who could shoot him before he could reach her, it went against every instinct he had to leave her vulnerable to him.

 

“ _Sansa_ ,” Baelish begged.

 

She stepped closer to him and stabbed him again, “ _That is for my mother_ ,” she said, holding him so that he wouldn’t fall. She raised the knife again and dug it into his spleen, “ _That is for my childhood_ ,” Baelish was coughing up blood, and it was nothing short of mercy when Sansa lifted up his head by his hair and dragged the knife across his throat, “ _And this is for Ella.”_ He was choking on his own blood and Jon heard her say, “I will never love you,” in his ear before she let him drop to the ground.

 

She dropped the knife, but her hands were steady. He’d thought her eyes would be wide, manic, the way his were after his first kill. But her face was calm, stoic, it was the face of justice.

 

“Grenn!,” he called into the walkie-talkie on his shoulder, “Come and get her.”

 

“No!,” Sansa cried, “Jon come with me - I’m not leaving without you.”

 

He grabbed her and kissed her. He didn’t care that there was death and carnage going on all around them, that she had just killed a man. He kissed her like it was the last and most important thing he’d ever do.

 

“I’ll be right behind you,” he promised though. She moved to protest but he said, “Robb and Ella are still in here.”

 

“I’ll help you,” she pleaded, clutching his shirt.

 

“You’ve done enough, Sansa,” he told her earnestly, “Please, for once in your life, just listen to me.”

 

She grabbed him and kissed him again. He kissed her back, but kept his eyes open, so he saw Grenn coming up behind her. He bade him forward and soon she was being lifted away from him. He gave her one last look, not focusing on the look of betrayal that now rested on her face, but just on _her_.

 

And then he started shooting.

 

There were a lot of them, so many. He wasn’t sure where they all came from, but it didn’t much matter. Their men outnumbered them two to one and when he thought of Sansa’s shaking hands, when he saw Ella’s mutilated face, shooting was as easy as breathing.

 

One grabbed him but he dug his elbow into his stomach, and when the man bent he dug it into his nose. Another one grabbed him and he punched him in the face. The man raised his gun at him but he fell in the next moment.

 

“Thanks,” he said to the man holding the raised, smoking gun.

 

“Thanks for calling,” Jaime Lannister said.

 

He nodded at him and then crossed to Robb and Ella. Robb was trying desperately to get her out, holding her one handed as he shot this one and that. He was picking them off like nothing, his hand supporting Ella’s head as though it would stop a bullet if one was aimed there. There were too many of them though and they were all going for her.

 

She was their only target, as though they were executing orders.

 

Jon saw red as he ran towards them. He ditched the gun, he was out of bullets anyway but he held the knife that Sansa had used and he plunged into one of their throats, grabbing the man’s gun and pistol whipping another with it.

 

He finally got to them and Robb turned to him, his gun raised. He looked like an animal, his face covered in blood, fury in his eyes. Jon raised his arms and he saw the relief flood in.

 

“Sansa?!,” Robb demanded.

 

“She’s safe,” Jon assured him. He raised his gun and picked off one that was coming towards them over Robb’s shoulder. “Come on brother, we’re getting out of here” he said, “You’ve got her, I’ve got you. Just walk right on out, nobody is getting near her.”

 

This wasn’t the first life or death situation they’d been in together, but it was the worst by far. Nothing had ever tested them quite so much as this, and he looked deep into Robb’s eyes begging him to trust him.

 

Wordlessly Robb handed him his gun and redistributed an unconscious Ella in his arms, picking her up and cradling her. He turned towards the exit and started walking. Jon raised both arms, his eyes darting every which way, looking for any that would dare come near them.

 

Their men were doing a good job of holding them off, creating as much of a barricade as possible when they saw Ella in Robb’s arms. He saw some fall, but there were more that did not, and right now, he couldn’t find it in him to think about anybody other than Robb and Ella.

 

He felt the early morning air on him, and the first wave of hope hit him. None of their men were out there, but he knew Sansa was far away, taken to a safe house. He scanned the perimeter and saw nothing, and then all of his focus was controlled by a dazed pair of green eyes.

 

“Jon?,” she asked.

 

“Hey little one,” he said, “We’re getting you out of here.”

 

She gave him a single heartbreaking smile and then all the joy drained from her face.

 

“Jon!,” she warned.

 

And that’s when his world went black.

 

***

 

“NOOOO!,” she cried as Jon slumped to the ground. She drew strength from the fact that he hadn’t been shot, only knocked out.

 

It was one of Baelish’s men, the one who’d hit her, threatened to rape her. Of course he’d lived, the worst ones always did.

 

Robb started to run with her in his arms. She wasn’t sure where he found the strength but all she could look at was Jon’s recumbent form, and the evil smile the man gave her as he started stalking forward.

 

“Robb where’s your gun?,” she asked desperately. She’d grown up shooting skeet, she could end this, she knew it.

 

“I gave it to Jon,” he told her as he stopped running, letting out an expletive.

 

She heard a car door opening and suddenly she was in a backseat, her backseat.

 

“Stay here,” Robb told her, and then he slammed the door shut, “This ends now.”

 

She looked down and saw her wrists were still bound, blood seeping from them. She tried to open the door but it was jammed, and she wondered absently if he had actually locked her in.

 

She watched as Robb stalked forward towards the giant.

 

“NOOO! NOOO!,” she said, throwing her weak body against the door. “God damn it!”

 

She moved to the other side and the door gave way easily and she nearly fell out of the car. Robb didn’t have a weapon, didn’t have anything, and she found herself wishing he could be in armor.

 

She looked around for anything useful, wondering if they’d left any extra guns in the car, but they wouldn’t have. They would have come straight for her.

 

She popped the trunk, wondering if she had any tools that could be useful to him.

 

“I’m going to kill you,” she heard the man say to Robb, “But not until you watch me fuck her so hard she’s begging for death.”

 

Robb ran and tackled the man and she heard their fists connecting with each others bodies. She turned back to the trunk, desperately looking, but found nothing useful. So she grabbed something useless.

 

She ran towards Robb who looked like he was going to beat the man to death with his bare hands.

 

“You dumb bitch,” the man said when he saw her though and Robb, as though he was Orpheus and this the underworld, turned back to look at her.

 

“NOO!,” she cried as the man took the opportunity to punch Robb and tackle him down.

 

She sprinted over to them, and she saw the man’s hands close around Robb’s throat, so she did the only thing she could think of. It was tricky with her wrists bound, but she wrapped her arms around the man’s neck and brought the riding crop against his throat, pulling back as hard as she could.

 

She felt his elbow connect with her stomach, just like she’d done to him, and she fell back against the ground. She coughed, trying to right herself, but it didn’t matter.

 

Robb had taken hold of the riding crop and tackled the man back. It might have been a sword for the way he raised it, and then he brought it plunging into the monster’s eye.

 

All the fight left the man as the riding crop lodged in his brain and Robb slumped on top of him. He was breathing heavily, and the relief at him being alive drained all the energy from her body and she fell back to the ground.

 

He groaned as he moved off the man, dragging himself towards her. He hovered over her, his blue eyes manic as they looked down at her. They hovered on the gash in her face and she wondered vainly if he’d ever be able to look at her the same way again.

 

“What part…,” he breathed, “Of stay here…,” he coughed, “Do you not understand?”

 

“You promised not to leave me behind!,” she argued stubbornly.

 

He let out an incredulous laugh, and there was blood dripping from his temple and his nose, but he was alive and whole, so she started laughing too, because he was here with her and Sansa had gotten away and Jon would wake up with a nasty headache but he’d wake up. Suddenly it didn’t matter so much if she’d never again be called beautiful, because they were alive and so was she.

 

She felt horribly lightheaded, and by now she’d begun to recognise the signs of what was going to happen.

 

The last thing she heard before her world went silent was Robb Stark telling her he loved her over and over again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd love your feedback! I've never written a fight/battle sequence before, and I'd love to hear if the pacing worked, and if it was easy enough to follow as it switched from perspective to perspective. I felt it was important to have all of the four represented here. 
> 
> AHH let me know.


	18. Sins of the Past

The sun hadn’t risen completely when she woke, but even still she could tell it was going to be a hot Texas day. There was something in the way the light filled the room, warm already despite the air conditioning that suggested a heatwave.

 

She burrowed into the pillows, they were soft, but unfamiliar and she jumped as she felt a pair of hands snaking around her waist.

 

“Did you sleep well, Elizabeth?,” the man asked.

 

 _Something familiar_ , she breathed in relief.

 

She turned around in his arms and raised her fingers up gingerly to the cut near his eye. The bruise was fading but he’d always have a scar there, where he’d been hit as he was guarding the boy and girl they loved.

 

“ _Mr. Darcy_ ,” she breathed, burrowing her head into his neck and feeling his strong hands on her back and in her hair.

 

He held her close, as he had been doing ever since they’d been reunited.

 

_She paced like a wild animal. She was told she was in a safe house, but what good was a safe house if the people you loved were not inside of it?_

 

_“Have you heard anything?,” she asked the man who had carried her out, setting her in one of the vans and driving like his life depended on it._

 

_“Not yet,” he said, answering her calmly for the fourth time that hour. “They’ll be alright though.”_

 

_“You don’t know that,” she pointed out petulantly._

 

_She knew he was only trying to be nice but she was past platitudes. She was no longer the girl who would believe a fortune teller when they told her that her future was only bright, unmarred, no longer the girl who believed that people could triumph out of sheer moral strength. She’d stopped being that girl the moment she plunged the knife in Petyr Baelish’s stomach. It was another thing he’d stolen from her, and if he was here, now, standing in front of her, she would have killed him again without a moment’s hesitation._

 

_“You’re right,” the man, Grenn she’d heard Jon call him, “But I know Jon and Robb,” he said, shaking his head._

 

_There were still some stories she’d believe though. Stories of knights who would do anything to save the girl they loved. Tales of bravery and valour and brotherhood. She’d seen it herself, how could she deny it?_

 

_“What about them?,” she asked hopefully._

 

_“They’re the guys you want on your side,” he said simply, “They’ve each saved my life once or twice, and they don’t love me the way they love each other, or her, or you.”_

 

_“You know about that?,” she asked._

 

_As far as she knew, Robb and Jon had kept the details of their relationships out of their daily reports._

 

_“I’d have to be a blind man not to after that kiss…,” he said and she blushed, remembering the sounds of death and the darkness of the warehouse, and Jon Snow’s lips on hers, “But uh…yeah. We’ve known all along.”_

 

_“Oh,” she said simply, because really, what was there to say to that?_

 

_She was sure the Order was involved in some way, that it was not just Baelish who was tracking them, but Grenn was not the person to have that conversation with._

 

_“The point is - nothing will stop Robb and Jon from saving her,” he promised kindly._

 

_“A bullet might,” she pointed out._

 

_“Maybe,” he allowed, “But they’re not easy men to kill.”_

 

_She wanted to ask him how he knew. She wanted facts and figures, but it would be futile. There was no evidence for a statement like that. It was faith, pure and simple._

 

_She paced back and forth, the pair retreating into silence again until they heard the front door bang shut._

 

_They heard heavy, sure footsteps climb the stairs and then suddenly, as though it was exactly what was always going to happen, Jon Snow stood before her._

 

_“Told you,” Grenn pointed out but she was already in Jon’s arms._

 

Everything had happened so quickly after that. No sooner was she in Jon’s arms than she was in the passenger seat of a car, not Ella’s or the Range Rover’s, heading North.

 

_“We’ve got to turn around!,” she protested._

 

_“We can’t,” Jon said, switching lanes and speeding up. “I’ve got to get you to Dallas before anyone realises you got off that bus.”_

 

_“Got off the-,” she started and then fell back against the seat. “It’s my alibi.”_

 

_“You aren’t going to need an alibi,” Jon said, shaking his head, “It’s…being taken care of.”_

 

_“Taken care of?,” she asked, and though she already knew the answer, she couldn’t help but ask, “By who?”_

 

They had been at the Dallas Omnia for two days. They’d been sleeping for most of it. She’d checked in under the name Elizabeth Bennett. The story went that Sansa Stone was a Missing Person, and it would be two days before she made herself known so that someone might call in her description. Two days until she would turn on her cell phone so that it could be tracked.

 

Jon had filed the report himself, threatened the Galveston police if they didn’t find her. It was all part of the story. To her knowledge, nobody had packed up the little house at 12 Seaglass Lane, and she thought that was rather fitting.

 

That way they’d always live there in a way, it would always be a little bit theirs.

 

“Do you think she’s woken up yet?,” she asked.

 

Jon had heard from Grenn yesterday with an update. He’d told him that Ella had been checked into Houston Methodist with symptoms including, but not limited to: extreme dehydration, extreme exhaustion, a laceration to the cheek, and possible internal bleeding. He’d been told that there were guards posted outside her door at all times, and that they’d heard that she’d been taken into surgery. That she was alive, that her vitals looked good, but that she had remained unconscious and the doctors would not give a prediction of when she would wake up.

 

“I don’t know, my love,” Jon said, tracing her cheek in the same spot where Ella’s wound would be, and she knew that though he was here with her, a part of his heart was in a hospital room 240 miles southeast. It was just as well, it was keeping hers company. “But her eyes were the last thing I saw before I went down, and I’m telling you I’ve never seen someone more alive.”

 

“I believe you,” she said, because his mere presence here was the only proof of his faith that she needed. “She’ll pull through, and we’ll all be together again soon.”

 

“Yeah…,” Jon said, though it didn’t sound like he quite believed it.

 

“He’ll be okay too,” she said, thinking of the brother they shared, the one who had gone into hell to save the girl he loved.

 

 _You’ve never seen anything like it_ , Jon had said, his face haunted. _It was something out of mythology. A dead monster and a savaged beauty._

 

Ella was the only innocent that remained, and Sansa had cried tears of joy when Jon had told her that her best friend had made it out without a black mark next to her name. She had no doubt that Ella would have killed someone for her, for any of them, but she hadn’t. And though they had all failed her in every other way imaginable, at least her soul remained intact and pure.

 

And Robb. Her brother and his. The tragic hero. What of him?

 

They had been assured that was all part of the plan.

 

***

 

The sun had risen high and he could feel the warmth of it coming through the window.

 

“Stark, your lawyer’s here to see you,” one of the deputies said as he unlocked the cell.

 

“I didn’t call my lawyer,” Robb pointed out.

 

He’d only had one call and he’d called the hospital.

 

“Yeah well,” the deputy said, as though he’d seen it all before. Robb sincerely doubted it. “Someone did.”

 

Robb got up, ignoring his cell mate’s curious if not somewhat reserved glance. He had not been so reserved when he’d first come in the night before, his knuckles not yet scabbed over from beating his wife. Needless to say they did not get along and his cell mate hadn’t met his gaze all day.

 

“Sorry ‘bout him,” the deputy said as they walked down the hall, “With tourist season up we got more drunk and disorderlys then we know what to do with. And you understand I couldn’t put him in there with just anybody. We’ll get ya yer own cell just as soon as we can.”

 

Robb nodded and thanked him. He’d been treated kindly since he’d arrived. The story, enough of it anyway, had proceeded him, and when they’d come for him at the hospital he’d been assured that they’d leave some of their own to guard Ella.

 

_“The way I see it, son,” Sheriff Mormont had said, “We got a right to protect what is ours.”_

 

_“Then let me go,” Robb had suggested._

 

_“I can’t do that,” the old bear said, shaking his head, “The Guv’ner will have my hide if I let you go. This investigation’ll last weeks, we aren’t even sure how many bodies are in there. How’d you even start the fire so quick? Wait, don’t. Don’t tell me that.”_

 

_“Couldn’t if I wanted to,” Robb said honestly, “I didn’t start the fire.”_

 

_“Lright Billy Joel,” the sheriff said, “Well you just sit tight. I’ll do what I can for ya.”_

 

_Robb nodded and stood up, ready to be escorted to his cell._

 

_“And son?,” he asked._

 

_“Yes sir?,” Robb said._

 

_“Hell of a move,” Mormont said, “How’d you think of it?”_

 

_“I didn’t think,” Robb said honestly, he didn’t care if this was used in his trial, “He was reaching for her.”_

 

_Mormont patted his shoulder, “That son, is what we call a Divine Move. Nothing godlier than protecting the people we love.”_

 

He walked down the hall, past the men in various states. Past the receptionist and the deputies flirting with her. Down the corridor to the small meeting room where Mormont had first handed him a cup of coffee.

 

The deputy opened the door and the person inside turned around.

 

He didn’t say anything until the door was shut, and even then, he couldn’t find the words.

 

“Well, well Mr. Stark,” Varys said, “You _have_ been busy.”

 

***

 

She woke up to a steady _beep, beep, beep._

 

It was not quite as bad as the _drip, drip, drip_ , not until she saw the tubes in her arms anyway, underneath her bandages.

 

She startled, trying to sit up, and gentle hands pressed her back against the pillows.

 

“Uncle Jaime?,” she asked, looking into his familiar green eyes.

 

There was concern and happiness swirling in them, as though he had been long awaiting her to say exactly that.

 

 

“Myrcella,” he said quietly, his hand on her hair, “Should I give you a minute before?”

 

“Before?,” she asked, though her voice was hoarse, “Before wha-“

 

Her mother came in unceremoniously with a team of terrified doctors, and she felt the annoying urge to smooth her hospital gown.

 

“Darling,” Cersei Lannister said, pushing past her brother to plant a kiss to her forehead.

 

In spite of herself, she felt tears prick her eyes. Cersei Lannister wasn’t a _Mom_ but she was her mother. In spite of everything. Everything that had happened, everything that they’d learned, she was familiar and nothing bad could happen to her if her mother was there.

 

“Mother,” she said, biting her lip to keep it from trembling.

 

She steadied herself and looked at the team of doctors who all were looking at the charts and the machines rather than her.

 

“Where are they?,” she asked her uncle as her mother had started to instruct one of the doctors how to do his job.

 

Her uncle gave her a wary smile and said softly, “They’re safe.”

 

It didn’t answer her question, but in that moment it was the only thing she needed to know, so she slumped back against the pillows. A nurse came in and rolled her eyes at her mother, clearly not as afraid as the doctors, and raised a cup to her lips.

 

“Here baby,” the woman said kindly.

 

She felt the cool water drip down her throat and closed her eyes, accepting more.

 

“You’re my favourite patient, you know,” the nurse said conspiratorially.

 

“I’ve been unconscious,” Ella pointed out.

 

“That you have, and _usually_ that’d be enough to secure your place in my esteem,” the nurse said with a grin, beckoning one of her own, “But _oh_ baby you got me a kiss from a real life prince.”

 

“Robb was here?,” Ella asked hopefully, gripping the woman’s hand.

 

“Robb was here?,” the nurse said, shaking her head, “You are just as sweet as sugar. Yes that boy of yours was here and even covered in _blood_ \- now I’m not asking questions - he was the yummiest thing south of the mason-dixon line.”

 

“Where is he?,” she asked.

 

The more she thought about it, there was no way he’d choose to be anywhere other than her side. Even her mother wouldn’t be able to keep him out.

 

The nurse looked at her with something close to pity and opened her mouth to say something, but her mother interrupted saying, “It’s time Myrcella gets some rest. Everyone out.”

 

“I’ll be back later, baby,” the nurse said and then turned to her mother and pointed at her, “Now you make sure she finishes that glass of water.”

 

Her mother balked at being spoken to like that but the nurse’s unwavering stare made her nod as everyone else, except her uncle, filed out.

 

Her mother stepped towards her and lifted the gauze pressed to her cheek and nodded, “I was right to fly Doctor Qyburn down. You’ll have a scar, that’s not to be avoided, but you will not be reduced to veils for the rest of your life.”

 

“Where are they?,” she repeated.

 

With every passing moment it was becoming clearer and clearer how very strange it was. That Robb was not there, that it was not Sansa’s eyes she looked into, that Jon was not sleeping in a chair next to her bed, holding her hand. Thinking exhausted her and she needed answers.

 

“Darling,” her mother started.

 

“Where is Robb?,” she asked.

 

He’d been here, her nurse had just told her so. He couldn’t be far away. She knew it, she’d know if he was.

 

“Myrcella, why don’t you get some rest,” her uncle said kindly, “You’ve been through quite an ordeal -“

 

“WHERE IS HE!?,” she shouted, their evasiveness filling her with fear.

 

“He’s in jail where he belongs,” her mother spat out.

 

Ella looked at her, opening and closing her mouth in the same way that Robb had done in that hotel in Nashville. She wanted to tell her to go to hell, to tell her that she wasn’t _her_ mother, she wanted to take back the tears she’d felt spring in her eyes when she’d seen her, feeling like a foolish little girl that she had felt relief only minutes ago.

 

She started reaching for the wires in her arms, pulling her oxygen tube out of her nose.

 

“Myrcella, Myrcella!,” her uncle warned, replacing it in her nose and holding her arms down gently, “Please.”

 

“ _In jail where he belongs?_ ,” she repeated, feeling positively feral. She was weak though, too weak, and she hated herself for it. “HE SAVED MY LIFE!”

 

There were few things she was certain of in that moment, but the knowledge that Robb Stark had saved her was one of them. She would never forget him saying _Sweetheart it’s me_ or the intensity of his gaze when he vowed _I’m not going anywhere without you_. She would never forget the feel of waking up in his arms, his strong chest shielding her from everything. He was her hero, plain and simple, and he had turned himself into a monster _for her_. She wasn’t sure how many he had killed, but she knew it was far too many.

 

He had smudges on his perfect soul because of her.

 

“He _risked_ your life,” her mother said angrily. “He had a job and he left you.”

 

“To protect Sansa!,” she protested.

 

Robb never would have left her if he thought she would be taken. The little home was supposed to be safe, she wasn’t their target. There was no way he could have known.

 

“She was not his concern,” her mother said dismissively.

 

“She’s his sister,” Ella argued.

 

Both of their eyes flamed and it confirmed what she had already suspected, what deep down, she had already known. That they had known who Sansa was the entire time, that they had lied to her since she was three years old.

 

“How much do you know?,” her Uncle asked her curiously.

 

“Everything,” she lied. “Everything you never told me.”

 

“Do not act like such a child,” her mother said angrily.

 

“I am a child,” she pointed out. _Your child._

 

It didn’t matter that she was college bound, that she was in love. She was a child, or at least she had been until a few days ago.

 

“You’re eighteen, a woman grown,” her mother argued, “Younger than I was when I first -“

 

“Cersei,” her uncle warned.

 

The pair of them appraised one another. They had always been like twin deities. Since her father had died they had been the twin pillars of her world. Distant, cool, but always there. Now though, they looked like two souls that had been cursed to spend eternity together, haunted by the wrongs of the past. Those wrongs held no interest to her, not now.

 

“What is Robb in jail for?,” she asked.

 

“1st degree murder,” her mother said with a small smile.

 

_I told you, I told you to leave me. You noble fool, I told you._

 

The fact that they were in Texas was not lost upon her. That murder was a hanging crime. That he was twenty and would be tried as an adult because that is what he was in the eyes of the law. Even though he liked rainbow sprinkles on his vanilla ice cream and would pull her across the street when he saw a puppy he knew she’d want to meet. Even though he held her on his back and spun wildly in the water until they made a whirlpool just to make her laugh. She could not find it in herself to separate the boy she loved from the man who’d saved her and the law would not care to distinguish between the two anyway.

 

“He cannot be tried for murder,” she said calmly, her fear allowing adrenaline to spread like a blanket around her once again.

 

“Why? Because he’s guilty?,” her mother asked snidely.

 

“Guilty of protecting me! Of saving _me_! Guilty of risking his own life for mine, of carrying me to safety, of -,” she said and then saw the anger in her mother’s eyes, and she knew that Cersei Lannister did not care that Robb had murdered. She had never cared much for the lives of others. Only herself, and her children. “Of _loving_ me. That’s what this is about isn’t it? Oh you truly are a hateful woman.”

 

“Myrcella!,” her uncle reprimanded her.

 

“He cannot be tried - we have to get him out -,” she started, not bothering to apologise.

 

It would be a lie and she was too busy trying to formulate a plan to come up with a convincing one.

 

_Where is Jon? Where’s Sansa? She’s the smartest of all of us she’ll know what to do._

 

“Relax,” her mother said, as though she was simply bored of the whole thing, “He will not be tried. The Order won’t allow it, he’s of no use to them rotting - either in prison or in a grave.”

 

“ _Use?_ ,” Ella repeated. “Robb Stark will not be used by anybody let alone a circle of murderers and traitors.”

 

“Murderers and traitors,” her mother chuckled, “Varys does love his dramatics.”

 

“You knew,” Ella realised. “You knew that he came to see us.”

 

“Of course we knew,” her uncle said, farewell in his eyes, “Who do you think sent him?”

 

“Why?,” she asked, feeling more a child than she’d been in some time.

 

“Oh Myrcella, do you really think you are the first generation to undergo one of the Order’s tests?,” her mother asked pityingly, and it was only then that Ella noticed how many ghosts stood in the room amongst them.


	19. Tell the ones that need to know

It was another two days before word spread to his cell that Sansa Stone had been found. She was in Dallas and had been found not by the police, but by Jon Snow, who had filed the missing person's report himself and had allegedly not stopped looking for her since. 

 

It appears that the girl had been made aware of Petyr Baelish' intentions for her, and rather than risking the lives of her friends, had traveled far away in the hopes that he would follow her. The fact that her best friend, Myrcella Baratheon, was caught in the cross-fire, or that her friend Robb Stark would be now in jail on charges of first degree murder was absolutely not her intention, and in fact she had no knowledge of it until she was reunited with Jon. 

 

That, at least, is what Jon Snow conveyed to Sheriff Mormont over the phone at 5:55 on Wednesday evening, and if the Sheriff had any further questions about the story, or how exactly Sansa Stone had come to know about Baelish' threat, he could not possibly ask them when he had promised his wife that he would be out the door at exactly 6 o'clock that evening. 

 

He did not even have time to tell Robb before he left, so he brought the news along with a cup of coffee first thing on Thursday morning. 

 

"Jon's with her?," Robb asked. 

 

The fact that this was the first question Robb asked confirmed some of Mormont's suspicions, but as he was to be released that day, he saw no need to put him back in the interrogation room. 

 

"Yep - don't think he'll be leaving her side from now on," Mormont assured him instead. 

 

"No...uh I doubt he will," Robb nodded, knowing perfectly well that Jon had not left her side since he left his and smiling gratefully at Mormont, "Thank you. For telling me."

 

"I thought you'd wanna know... pretty girl," Mormont said. 

 

"She is at that," Robb confirmed. 

 

"Almost...," Mormont started and then shook his head, because after all a statement such as that might as well be a question and said instead, "We'll get yer paperwork started and have you outta here before lunchtime today."

 

"Thank you, sir," Robb said and offered his hand, "For everything."

 

Mormont waved him away and said, "Shake my hand when yer outta there, until then just hang tight."

 

There was little else to do other than sit and wait and think. He thought about his discussion with Varys a couple of days prior. His palms still had scabs from digging his fingernails in to keep from hitting the man, because even he knew it wasn't wise to assault the person helping you get away with murder.  

 

_"Well, well, Mr. Stark, you have been busy," Varys said in that obnoxiously affected voice._

 

_"Yeah well, you know how summers are...," Robb evaded._

 

_"I was so happy to see your darling sister got away," Varys said, "Of course, she is not quite as innocent now as the last time I saw her, is she?"_

 

_"I have no idea what you're talking about," Robb said, "Sansa's missing. Has been for days now."_

 

_"Friends should not play such games with one another and I do so hope to become friends. Let us have honesty between us, I’ll begin. Sansa Stone aka Sansa Stark is currently in room 422 of the Dallas Omnia with Jon Snow aka Jon Targaryen under the name Elizabeth Bennett. She has most recently ordered a nicoise salad and a hamburger and our cameras show that they have not left bed since 2 pm yesterday."_

 

_"You have cameras in her room?," Robb seethed._

 

_"Of course we do," Varys said. "We have cameras everywhere. Microphones everywhere."_

 

_"Then how the hell did the last few days happen?," Robb raged, seeing red, "HOW THE HELL DID YOU LET ELLA BE TAKEN?"_

 

_"She never told you, did she? She told Jon and I would have though… ah well,” Varys asked calmly._

 

_"Told me what?," Robb asked in spite of himself._

 

_"There was never going to be a way to save them both," Varys said as though he very deeply regretted it. "One of them was always doomed."_

 

_"Why? How? You could have stopped it - you -," he said and then let out a whimper when he looked into Varys' eyes and saw the truth depth of his amorality, "You did not want to stop it. It was always your intention that one of them would be taken."_

 

_"My intention, you flatter me. No, my dear boy, I am but a cog in a wheel that has been rolling for many centuries," Varys said._

 

_"And why would the Order be interested in endangering two eighteen year old girls? Why them? Aren't they practically considered royalty to you people?,” he asked, remembering the way Varys looked at Ella as though he might kneel before her._

 

_"Ah yes, they have some of the finest bloodlines imaginable. Rivaled only by yours and Jon's of course,” Varys agreed._

 

_"Then why not us?,” Robb asked. It would have been so much easier, so much kinder, “Why did you not take one of us?"_

 

_"We took none of you,” Varys said indignantly._

 

_"Friends should not play such games, Varys," Robb said, “With all of your eyes and ears on us allowing them to be taken is as good as taking them. Now tell me why."_

 

_"Myrcella has truly met her match in you, hasn't she? She told you back in Ohio, but I'll admit it took me longer to see it," Varys sighed, "You really are impressive."_

 

_"Flattery will get you absolutely nowhere,” Robb warned, forcing himself to stay calm. This was now a fact finding mission, he had to keep his head. “You have allowed the girls I love to be hunted and terrified. Held captive and maimed. Either or both could have died because of you and your Order and I want to know why."_

 

_"Isn't it obvious?," Varys asked, "To see what you are made of."_

 

_"Me?"_

 

_"All of you.You are the the heirs of a golden empire, no, don't protest. Just because we do not have a table at the United Nations, a flag, or an anthem, we are an empire nonetheless. We have made kings and unmade them. And you, Robb Stark, your family lines go back to the Dark Ages - your families brought to an end the Dark Ages, yours and Sansa's, Myrcella's and Jon's. Your ancestors created the world as you know it today, long before they settled in this land. Long before they made the America that dreams were built on. But you…you are the generation I have been waiting for my entire life."_

 

_"Why? Why us?," he asked._

 

_"And you say you don't want flattery,” Varys scoffed._

 

_"I don't, I want an explanation. Why are we different?,” Robb persisted._

 

_"Because you have it all. You have everything the generations before you did - intelligence, strength, the right family names - but you have something they all lack. You have hearts."_

 

_"So that's why," Robb said, a pit in his stomach. "That is why it had to be Ella or Sansa. You weren't testing our strength or our intelligence. You were testing our hearts."_

 

_"Indeed, my dear boy. I personally had no doubts that Sansa and Myrcella would go to the ends of the earth for you or Jon but there are others, more powerful than I who felt that it had to be them. My how did they prove the Order wrong. Myrcella, beaten and bloodied, threatened with rape, threatened with death, threatened with slavery and every word she spoke was in protection of one of you."_

 

_"And do I look surprised by that?," he balked._

 

_"You do not. But then, you love her, and who among us sees the object of our affection as they truly are?"_

 

_"There were different ways of testing us all," he said, "You did not need to turn Sansa into a murderer. Ella did not need to be brutalized,” losing his cool when he thought about the way they would be changed irrevocably. All the things that had been taken from them. “How dare you? What is to stop me from killing you here and now?"_

 

_"Absolutely nothing,” Vary shrugged, “It may even satisfy your anger, for a time. But in the end it would be of no matter, as I am of no matter."_

 

_"You think so little of yourself?,” Robb questioned._

 

_"I think so highly of the Order,” Varys corrected, “Do not mistake me, my boy. You all might be the bright stars but ultimately you are a cog, as am I. You may be a shinier cog, a stronger cog, but you are a cog nonetheless. We all have our parts to play."_

 

_"And what if we refuse?,” Robb asked._

 

_There was no way they would play their parts as he said. They would go far away from here, as his mother did. They’d change their names, find an island somewhere. They’d bathe in the sea and work when they needed to eat. It wouldn’t be the Ivy League but they could make a life somewhere else, somewhere just the four of them. They’d name it 12 Seaglass Lane and Sansa would teach him how to cook and Jon would read to Ella while she knit and they’d be a family, they’d be free._

 

_"You could. Others have before, Senator Glover for instance. But my dear boy, the Orders tests always serve more than one purpose. You have all proven your strength, that is true. But as you say, this was a test of the heart. If they would allow this, as a mere test, what do you suppose might be done to persuade you, now that they know what strings to pull to unravel you all?"_

 

_"You will never get your hands on them again.”_

 

_"Nor do we have any desire to. They are safe. They are protected just as royalty should be."_

 

_"From everyone, apart from you."_

 

_"Nonsense. We are loyal to our own. We only ask that you are loyal in kind."_

 

_"Why are you telling me all of this? Would it not be easier to have my loyalty if I were ignorant?"_

 

_"Perhaps. But you see, I trust you, Robb Stark. As I say, I want to be your friend. I want to get you out of here. Will you allow me to do that?"_

 

“Stark, it’s time,” the deputy broke him out of his thoughts.

 

He stood up and followed the deputy out, down the long corridor of the other cells, towards the receptionist.

 

It was quiet, quieter than it had been in days, and there was no one in the hall except a lone figure looking at the bulletin board.

 

“Recognise anyone?,” he asked.

 

They turned their head, and the sunlight caught in their hair, and they offered him the single most beautiful smile he’d ever seen.

 

“Hi baby, miss me?”

 

***

 

“Recognise anyone?,” his familiar tone cut through her like a knife.

 

She turned towards him and there he was. Alive and whole and free.

 

“Hi baby,” she said, feigning nonchalance even though her heart was thudding in her chest, “Miss me?”

 

He walked towards her purposefully and she felt the wind knocked out of her when he bent down to kiss her softly. It was her that deepened the kiss, wanting to crawl inside of him to the safest place she knew.

 

“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, kissing her forehead, and her cheek, the unharmed one, and her head, “I’m so sorry.”

 

“No,” she protested adamantly, grabbing his face in between her hands, “You don’t get to apologise to me. I won’t allow it…,” she said her lower lip trembling, “I won’t hear it.”

 

“Okay, okay,” he promised, kissing her again.

 

“Next time you go to jail I’m coming with you,” she said stupidly, jumping into his arms and feeling his strong embrace around her, “I’m transferring to Dartmouth I’m-“

 

“Slow down, sweetheart,” he said, shaking his head, “You can’t transfer to Dartmouth.”

 

“I got in,” she said stubbornly.

 

“Yeah but that would kind of defeat the point of me transferring to Yale…,” he said with a grin.

 

She let out a giggle and kissed him again. She’d missed him so much during those long, lonely days in the hospital. Sansa and Jon too. She’d tried to reach them but their phones had been turned off. A part of the plan she’d been told.

 

He let her down and brought his thumb up to hover over the bandage on her left cheek. He was about to say something when they heard someone clearing their throat.

 

She turned to see a kindly looking older man in a sheriff’s uniform.

 

“Mr. Stark,” he said and offered his hand.

 

Robb took it, shaking it firmly and the man clapped him on the back.

 

“You’ve got some forms to sign,” the man said gruffly, “Cassie at reception can help you.” Robb held his hand out for her but the man said, “I’ll keep her company, son. Won’t let her out of my sight, I promise.”

 

Robb looked at her and she nodded and he pressed a kiss to her forehead and walked over to reception.

 

“Would you like to sit down, my dear?,” the sheriff asked her kindly. _Ah, my dear, you’re awake_ , a terrifying voice whispered in her head and she felt her knees buckle. He took hold of her arm, a look of concern on his face and led her to sit down. “You’ve had a flashback, but you’re alright. You are in the Galveston Police Department, I am Sheriff Mormont and your boyfriend Robb Stark is just over there. Petyr Baelish is dead. You are safe.”

 

She gripped his hand and nodded, “I’m sorry, sir. It is…that is what he called me.”

 

“I understand, Myrcella,” he said warmly, making her believe that he did. “And you have nothing to apologise for. You have been through something that no one, no one should ever have to go through. And you do not apologise for dealing with it, is that clear?”

 

She nodded, placing her other hand on his.

 

“I only wanted to let you know how very glad I am that you have pulled through,” he said and shook his head, “For your sake, more than anything, but for his too.”

 

“You seem fond of him,” she said.

 

“Does that surprise you?,” he asked.

 

“Not at all,” she said with a grin, “It’s just given the situation…”

 

He nodded, “The way I see it, Robb Stark risked his life to protect yours. That’s all I ask of my deputies, and I see no less honor in it just because he doesn’t have a damn badge on him.”

 

She looked over at Robb who was watching them as he signed a form and she smiled.

 

“He’d look good in a uniform,” she said and the Sheriff chuckled. She turned to him and said, “Thank you.”

 

“For what?,” he asked.

 

“Your kindness,” she said, “To me, and to him. I have learned that it is rare and valuable and I will not forget it.”

 

He kissed her hand and patted it, standing up as Robb returned.

 

“Ready, sweetheart?,” he asked, looking between them.

 

“Ready,” she said standing up and waved at the Sheriff and took Robb’s offered hand.

 

He waved as well and they walked out into the warm Texas day. She handed him the keys and he walked her over to the passenger side, letting her in and shutting the door before walking over to the driver’s.

 

“Do you have to have follow-up appointments?,” he asked her, “Do we need to find a place to stay?”

 

“No,” she said. She didn’t want to stay here a moment longer than she needed to. “I can go to any clinic to have these stitches removed in a few days.”

 

She felt his thumb on her cheek again, hovering over her bandages.

 

“Do you need these to protect them from the sun?,” he asked her.

 

“No,” she shook her head, picking at an errand thread on her sundress. “I asked them to put them on before I left. I… I didn’t want to frighten you.”

 

“May I?,” he asked her softly.

 

She looked into his blue eyes that were telling her, screaming at her, that he wouldn’t run away and she nodded.

 

He lifted the medical tape carefully, removing the gauze from her. It felt better already, the gauze was irritating against her skin and she closed her eyes.

 

When she opened them she saw tears in Robb’s eyes.

 

“I’m sorry,” she said, tears filling her own, “I… I know that -“

 

“You don’t get to apologise to me,” he said, his thumb stroking her cheek lightly, carefully avoiding the stitches. The swelling had gone down and thanks to Doctor Qyburn there was no infection and very little pain, “I won’t allow it. I just… I didn’t know you could be more beautiful, but you are, Ella. You are more beautiful now than you’ve ever been.”

 

“Robb,” she rolled her eyes. She didn’t want to be placated. “You don’t have to say that, I know that you still love me. I don’t think you’re as shallow as all that. But I don’t need you to -“

 

“I’m not lying. You have always been the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known. These eyes…”

 

“Jade with a little bit of Lake Como,” she repeated his words from the hotel room in Nashville.

 

He nodded, “This hair, honey and wet sand and sunlight. But it’s this heart,” he said, placing his hand over her breast, tears falling freely from his eyes, “This perfect heart that has always been the most beautiful thing about you. And now I’m going to see it every day, because this scar is you begging me to take Sansa away, this scar is you telling her to find Jon and get married and have babies, this scar is you telling me you trusted me even though I had failed you in every way imaginable.”

 

“You never failed me,” she argued.

 

“We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one,” he said, his eyes drinking her in, “But know this: Years from now, when a little girl is afraid she is going to tell herself _I can be brave like Ella Baratheon_.”

 

“I love you,” she said, because she realised the last time she did there had been bullets flying in every direction. “I loved you in that hotel room in Nashville even though I was too stubborn to tell you, and I have loved you every moment since.”

 

He opened his mouth to say something but her phone rang. She had grown so used to it being off that it jarred her and she grabbed it. She grinned when she saw the most beautiful name in the world lighting up on her caller ID.

 

“DOVEY!,” she said, laughing and crying, putting her on speaker phone.

 

“Ella oh my god I’m so sorry I had to wait so long to call you I miss you I love you I - what? oh - HOLD ON DON’T HANG UP,” Sansa said.

 

“Ella are you there?!,” Jon’s voice broke in.

 

“I’m here, Robb’s here too!,” she said, wiggling in excitement, “Thank you, thank you Jon. Is your head alright?”

 

“As good as it ever was, which isn’t saying much,” he said and Robb chuckled, “I’m so glad you’re alright, little one. Robb you didn’t cheat on her in the slammer did you?”

 

“No, asshat,” Robb scoffed and they heard Sansa’s giggle on the other end. “Ah there it is, there’s that giggle I’ve missed.”

 

“Robby,” Sansa breathed, “It should have been me in there.”

 

“No it shouldn’tve,” they heard Jon scold her as though he’d done it many times in the past few days. “If it should have been any of us it should’ve been me. I obviously got more than Robb did.”

 

Robb opened his mouth to protest and Ella held her hand to his mouth, “Boys,” she said sternly.

 

“We’re safe now, Ella,” Sansa said and Ella smiled at Robb. His eyes looked wary but he smiled back. “Meet us in Santa Fe, we’ll find a little house and some horses. Robb’ll have to buy you a new riding crop though I hear.”

 

“You’re crazy, but I love you anyway,” Ella said, squeezing Robb’s hand in case he was haunted by any demons. He rolled his eyes at her though and she knew that he’d never regret what he’d done to save her. “We’re coming for you, and you and I are going to show these boys how the West was won.”

 

“Look out for my sister until I get there,” Robb told Jon.

 

“And you look out for mine,” Jon said.

 

They hung up and Robb pulled out of the parking lot as she plugged Santa Fe into her navigation. They were heading north and he took her hand in his and brought it to his lips.

 

“By the way,” Robb said, “I love you too.”


	20. Everything that is happening has happened already

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ah I can't believe it's here! Thank you all so much for the support on this one. I've loved loved loved writing it and I'm so glad you enjoyed reading it. 
> 
> I am sorry to see it come to and end but I hope you think it is a worthy one!

“Are you cold, love?,” Jon asked, tightening his hold on Sansa, “Had I known I would have hired a car.”

 

“You are keeping me warm,” she said sweetly, tucking her hand into the pocket of his overcoat, “And besides, it is tradition to arrive on foot.”

 

_Tradition._

 

They had been hearing that word a lot lately. In fact, since they had stepped foot on Yale’s campus in late August it felt as though that had been all he had been hearing about.

 

He gritted his teeth and nodded, “Of course you’re right,” but could not help but smile down at her when she lifted her head, “As always.”

 

She pressed a frozen kiss to his lips and beamed up at him before turning behind her.

 

“Hurry up, slow pokes,” she said.

 

“We’re coming, we’re coming,” Ella promised.

 

She too wore only a fur stole over her gown and Robb had tucked her into his overcoat along with him as they made their way through the snowy quad.

 

It was nearing Christmas and they had all been locked in the library for days studying for their finals. The campus was nearly deserted now but those who remained, who were heading home from studying or going off to a party cast curious glances their way. He knew they looked like something out of a different time. Four kids in much too expensive clothes, hurrying huddled in the snow under the old fashioned street lamps.

 

Robb and Ella fell into step with them and he saw Sansa reach for Ella’s hand at the same time Ella reached for hers. They were wearing gloves at least, though the long white silk would most likely do little against the chill.

 

They could be found like this at all hours of the day. Traveling with one another from class or to the library. Sansa, like Robb, had determined that after the summer they all had that she could not be parted from them, so with the help of The Order had transferred last minute. She and Ella shared a large two bedroom suite in the premier freshman dorm and had cast a spell over the campus. People everywhere whispered about them, the two mysterious beauties with tragedy in their eyes.

 

Ella, in particular, even with her scar now faded to an almost innocent white, seemed to inspire a sick fascination. _How do you think she got it?_ he would hear as he escorted her through the library.

 

“It’s not too late,” he said, turning to Robb, speaking over the girls’ heads.

 

Robb turned to him, a look of warning in his blue eyes but said jovially, “Ah brother, you know the girls will not be denied a party.”

 

He looked at Ella and Sansa who had turned to him as well. The looks they gave assured him that Robb had told it true.

 

_They will not be denied this._

 

“You’re right,” Jon said more easily than he felt, “I’ll be better with a drink in me anyway.”

 

“What should I teach you tonight?,” Sansa asked, “The waltz?”

 

He smiled, thinking of that night in Louisville. Everything had seemed so easy then, so manageable. It had not been clear that Baelish had been after her yet, he and Robb had simply been hired to look after two innocent heiresses as they had a summer road trip.

 

He remembered Sansa dragging him to the dance floor and saying, _“You know, Jon Snow, I’m not sure I could ever be with a man that didn’t know how to do the Charleston.”_

 

He had grinned at her and said simply, “ _Then you must teach it to me.”_

 

In that moment he knew that he would be anything she needed. Anything she wanted. If she would only go on looking at him the way she was and speaking with that teasing lilt in her voice. It was truer now than it had been then. He would always be whatever she needed him to be, he would always try to be whatever she wanted him to be.

 

Tonight she needed him to be not only her doting boyfriend, a role that came quite naturally to him, but Jon Targaryen as well. The White Wolf, the heir to one of the oldest dynasties the world had ever known.

 

Tonight she needed the Prince who was Promised.

 

So he turned to her with a grin and said, “For starters.”

 

***

 

It was exactly as breathtaking as they’d been told to expect. It was exactly the kind of thing that wasn’t supposed to exist. It was _all too Illuminati_ as Jon had once pointed out.

 

Nevertheless, deep underground beneath Yale’s oldest library lay a ballroom fit for the Winter Palace.

 

“Oh!,” Ella said, delightedly clapping her hands together, as though it were all a mere delight planned entirely for her, for them, “Is it not a wonder?”

 

It was not entirely untrue that it had been planned for them. They, after all, were the next generation. The successors. _The Children of the Dawn._

 

“A wonder,” Sansa repeated with a nod, taking the hand Ella offered her.

 

Robb and Jon stuck close by as they always did. Servants had come up to them and addressed them each by name, taking their stoles and overcoats and belongings and telling them that they would be close by should they have any pressing needs.

 

It did not escape Sansa that hers and Ella’s had been strapping young men while Robb and Jon’s had been beautiful women and looking around, at the way the other servants seem to linger around some of their guests, she grew to understand quite quickly what pressing needs there might be.

 

“My love,” Jon said, clearly having noticed the same, and he crooked his elbow for her. She threaded her arm through his and held his bicep with her other hand. “Have I told you yet how stunning you look?”

 

“No,” she said with a pout and then grinned at him.

 

In truth he had been speechless when she had come out ready for the evening, which had been the exact reaction she was hoping for.

 

She wore a deep aubergine grecian dress that she had made herself. It had a braided strap that wrapped around her neck and fit her slender frame perfectly, falling easily like a column against her long legs. It was perhaps not entirely suitable to a cold Connecticut winter night, but when she felt the material against her body she had no trouble imagining herself on the banks of the Aegean. She had pulled her hair off of her face but it hung loosely down her back and had kept her make up light apart from her eyes which were lined in kohl.

 

She’d worn white gloves, as was the _tradition,_ and Ella had lent her a tiny golden coronet that tied the whole look together.

 

“I’m a boor,” Jon said with a grin of his own, “A brute and I don’t deserve you. But nevertheless you are the loveliest girl I’ve ever seen in my life and there is only one night where you have ever been lovelier than this.”

 

She did not need to ask him what night he referred to. She knew. The night they’d almost lost everything. The night she’d shown him that she was not merely the sweet girl he needed to protect. The night she became the White Wolf’s mate.

 

“You are a boor,” she teased, “And a brute, but I love you still.”

 

“As I love -,” he started but they were interrupted by a voice to their right.

 

“Good evening, dear friends,” a cold, deep voice said. Sansa recognised it immediately and squeezed Ella’s hand which still rested in hers. Ella squeezed it back and Sansa did not miss the way Robb and Jon had crowded in, even as they all looked towards the podium. “It is my duty to welcome you to this evening’s investiture. Tonight, like so many nights before, we call upon the youngest among us to uphold the ideals that have transcended time and geography, ideals that have withstood the rise and fall of regimes, that have guided the blind towards the light, the ideals upon which this world of ours rests. Tonight, we ask our children to take up arms in our sacred crusade, not for any flag, not for any church, not for any god, but for the future of all humankind. It is my duty to welcome you all, but it is my honor to call upon the first new soldier of the Order, my granddaughter, Myrcella Baratheon.”

 

***

 

It was hard to let her go. It was Ella who kissed his cheek as she extracted herself from him, walking towards her grandfather.

 

The other guests clapped for her vehemently. Her family lines were enough to garner respect amongst them but tales of their summer had long since spread through The Order and she was a legend already.

 

She looked every inch the princess The Order purported her to be wearing a midnight blue silk gown that had a high straight neck and slender straps, that fit her tiny waist snugly before bursting outwards like a bell. She had paired it with a pair of long oyster gloves as was _tradition_ and the silver and sapphire bracelet he’d gifted her rested over her glove on her left wrist. Her hair was up in a high bun and her face was defiantly bare, her scar particularly apparent in this light.

 

She walked through them all gracefully, her head held high. When she reached her grandfather she kissed his cheek which caused some to gasp. Apparently Tywin Lannister was not prone to affection.

 

Jon was called next and Robb held Sansa’s hand as Jon left her side. He did not make any gesture towards Tywin, but went immediately to Ella’s side, taking her hand in his.

 

They were the match that had been hoped for. The match that had been promised until he and Sansa mucked it all up. He could not fault The Order for wishing it so. They looked like monarchs standing beside one another. They looked like they could crumble nations and form empires.

 

He and Sansa were called next as a pair. The Order craved seeing the eldest Stark children reunited once again and it was just as well as Robb had no intention of leaving Sansa behind.

 

He stood beside Jon, Sansa on his left. There were a few more called. Two Tullys and two Tyrells, all of whom were in from Harvard.

 

He wondered briefly what tests they had gone through in order to stand here now. He wondered what loves had been threatened, what strings of theirs had been pulled. He could not see if there was tragedy in their eyes, all he knew was that none carried the marks of it on their skin as Ella and Jon did.

 

“Children of the Dawn,” Tywin started, “We call upon you on behalf of your ancestors, on behalf of the generations to follow. How do you answer?”

 

_“What do you mean a test?,” Sansa asked. Her cheeks were flushed but whether it was from anger or the New Mexico sun he could not be sure._

 

_“You and Ella,” Robb said, “You were our test.”_

 

_“Because they want you to join,” Sansa realised._

 

_“Not just them, Dovey,” Ella said, grabbing her hand._

 

“With pride,” they all chorused.

 

“We ask that you hold sacred this divine endowment, to shed light upon the darkest realms of our world. How do you answer?,” Tywin went on.

 

_“They want us all,” Robb confirmed._

 

_“Good,” Jon said._

 

_“Good?,” Sansa asked, “Why is that good?”_

 

_“Because it will be easier to destroy them from within,” Robb agreed._

 

“With purpose,” they all vowed.

 

“We ask you to serve The Order above country, above family, above yourself. How do you answer?,” Tywin asked.

 

_“Take down The Order?,” Sansa asked, “They’ll kill us all! Why can’t we just stay out of it?”_

 

_“They won’t let us,” Robb said, “They will never let us go and they know exactly how to make us do their bidding.”_

 

_“We were your test…,” Sansa said, realisation dawning in her eyes._

 

_“They now know exactly how far we will go to protect one another,” Ella said, her scar only beginning to heal._

 

“With loyalty,” they all promised.

 

“We ask that you join us, here and now. How do you answer?,” Tywin asked.

 

_“We will never let anyone touch you again,” Jon promised._

 

_“Say the word and we will find an island somewhere, we’ll keep you safe,” Robb agreed._

 

_“No,” Sansa said defiantly, “While The Order remains, we will never be safe.”_

 

_“They turned children into soldiers,” Ella said, “May god have mercy on their souls.”_

 

“Without hesitation,” they all agreed.

 

***

 

“I am glad to see you’ve come around,” her Uncle Jaime said as he lead her in a dance, “In the hospital… you said some things… that would make others question your loyalty.”

 

“I am a Lannister and a Baratheon,” Ella said, “My loyalty is without question.”

 

It was a trick she had learned from her Grandfather many years before. To lie by saying only things that were entirely true.

 

“As I now see,” her Uncle said, “And any who think to question it will have to take it up with me.”

 

“Thank you,” she beamed up at him, her big strong Uncle who used to growl at thunderstorms when they frightened her, who taught her how to sail and how to shoot, “And thank you, for what you did. For coming. I never thanked you properly, I’m sorry.”

 

“You were in shock,” her Uncle said, and shook his head, “And The Order… is stuck in tradition. Some of the tests are outdated now.”

 

 _How many?_ she wanted to ask. _How many Lords’ sisters were set upon after the opera? How many Prince’s wives were held ransom?_

 

_How many women have suffered so that men might prove their strength?_

 

“And yet, we passed,” she said, as though it didn’t much matter.

 

“You have to know… you were never in any real danger,” her Uncle said and she saw red, thinking of the man who pressed his hard cock against her butt. “We were already moving in when they called.”

 

“You thought they’d fail?,” she asked incredulously.

 

“We weren’t sure,” he told her, “That in the end they’d have what it took.”

 

She followed his line of vision to where Robb, Jon and Sansa stood.

 

“And are you sure now?,” she asked, having to fight to keep her voice steady.

 

“Of course,” her Uncle nodded, then turned back to her, “We know now what incredible feats you all are capable of when the people you love are in danger.”

 

“Careful, Uncle,” she teased, full of false bravado, “You almost make that sound like a threat.”

 

“Almost?,” he asked her.

 

She was about to say something but the song ended and he bowed to her and with a kiss to her hand he was gone.

 

She walked across to where Robb, Jon and Sansa stood. Robb handed her a glass of champagne and she took a sip, and then a larger one.

 

“Did we miss anything?,” Jon asked casually, clapping with the others as a dance had started in the center of the room.

 

“Nothing new,” Ella said honestly, “Just more of the same.”

 

“Well then,” Robb said, “I’d like to propose a toast.”

 

“To what?,” Sansa asked.

 

“To innocence,” Robb said with a smile for her.

 

She remembered that first night in Ohio. The pull she’d felt towards him immediately. She remembered the games they played with one another as they fell steadily and without preamble.

 

And she remembered what she’d said then, so she chorused with him, “ _Gone_ but never forgotten.”

 

“To innocence,” they all chimed and clinked glasses.

 

“And to The Order,” Jon said, and more than one of them shot him a warning glance but he merely smiled and said, “For showing us our true potential.”

 

“To The Order,” they all chorused and clinked glasses once again.

 

They must have grown louder for it soon followed that the entire room raised their glasses to them and echoed, “To The Order.”

 

***

 

If you had asked Ella Baratheon and Sansa Stark what they would have hoped to get out of their summer road trip, they probably would have giggled and said _Adventure_ and _A really good tan_. Sansa would have said _Oh maybe love!_ and Ella would have said _Or at least a few good stories for freshman orientation!_

 

If you had asked them what they would have _thought_ they’d get out of it, Sansa probably would have said _a sunburn_ and Ella would have said _a summer away from my mother._

 

Neither would have been able to tell you what they would lose that summer. Their virginities and their innocence, the families they thought they knew and the world they thought they’d lived in.

 

But if you asked Ella Baratheon and Sansa Stark on that snowy night, deep underground the campus of the University that predated the very country it stood in, if they regretted embarking on that summer road trip, they would have told you, without hesitation, no.

 

Because neither could have predicted during that snowy study hall what they would have gained that summer. That they would come out with more than a tan. With a brother each and a love that would last a lifetime. That there would be a new family to replace the old, stronger, and more loyal than any that came before it.

 

And did The Order ever regret showing them their true potential? Well that’s a different story…


End file.
